The present invention relates generally to providing additional information on digital objects such as pictures in web pages. Example of additional information according to some embodiments is advertisements related to product and services presented in pictures or videos within website content.
Internet is used widely to find and access information. Number of web sites globally can be estimated to be billions. Typically web sites contain information such as text, pictures, videos, audio etc. Rationale and motivation to set up a web site depends on person, organization or company that is setting up the site.
Companies such as retailers set up web sites mainly in order to provide consumers information about their products and services. One example of such web site is web page of computer manufacturer Apple® (http://www.apple.com) where the web site contains information about new products (computers, iPods, iPhones) as well as applications (software) which is available for sale. Site provides information for consumer either on where is the closest retail shop and in addition it provides consumers possibility to purchase goods on line using payment methods like credit card or bank payment. Other examples of web site set up in order to sell goods and services to consumers include Amazon® (http://www.amazon.com) for purchasing books (real and electronic) and Hotels.com (http://www.hotels.com) for selecting and booking hotel rooms globally. Many of these companies with product or service want more consumers to visit their site and ultimately purchase the product or the service. One method for getting more consumers to site is means of advertisement in other web sites.
There are organizations and companies that are in business of providing information such as news for consumers. One example of such web site is news web site of CNN® (http://www.cnn.com) a web site of global news channel CNN. The site contains information of breaking news and other news locally and globally. Other examples of web sites for providing information include video web sites like YouTube® (http://www.youtube.com) for consumers to access (and share) videos. Additional examples of web services are social network sites such as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) for consumers to discuss and share information with their peer groups and Google (http//www.google.com) for providing search services for consumers. The business rationale for above companies running sites of above examples is mainly advertisement driven i.e. web site owner makes money by presenting advertisements to consumers who visit the site. Money is typically generated when advertisement is shown (pay per view), when a link in the advertisement is clicked (pay per click), or when interaction with advertisement results on sales (pay per results).
Problem with said advertisement methods is that it is often found irrelevant or annoying for consumers. Main reason to visit site is in the end of the day anyway to get to see content of the site not the advertisements.
Prior art U.S. Pat. No. 7,003,734 describers an advertisement type where a banner advertisement includes “pop up” areas. In such advertisement additional information in form of text, picture, video or other html content is presented to user when user hover with mouse over banner advertisement. Problem with prior art is that it requires publisher web site (such as CNN.com) to host some of the images and other date related to pop up in order to overcome limitations in Javascript object model prohibiting cross domain interaction or to host publisher content at advertisement provider domain.
In accordance with aspects of the present invention, there is provided a method and system according to the appended independent and depended claims.
At least some embodiments of the invention provide a method for creating advertisements to be presented in a pop up frame in a web site. Said method comprises of storing in a database advertisement contents from plurality of advertisers, at least some of the advertisers being store owners and some of the advertisers being product owners. Store owners and product owners can store in database bid information relating to advertisement content. Bid information related to advertisements can consists of a first bid amount, the first bid amount being set by a store owner and defining specific a bid amount related to the store owner, and a set of second bid amounts, the set of second bid amounts being set by a store owner and defining bids allocated to plurality of products or product owners, and the bid information relating to advertisements of product owners comprising a third bid amount, the third bid amount being set by a product owner and defining bid amounts allocated to plurality of products. A request for an advertisement to be displayed in the pop up frame relating to a hovered product can be received by advertisement service and advertisement is created by selecting and combining an advertisement of a product owner and an advertisement of a store owner. Selecting can be based on comparing sum of the first, second and third bid amounts of bids set by store owners and product owners of which the second and third bid being allocated to the hovered product.
Additionally in web page with text and at least one picture or video are stored on a server and the picture has been associated with a product has designated area which trigger a pop up frame to be displayed when hovered with mouse or other pointing means such as touch screen.
Additionally owner of the picture can set association of a pop up frame i.e. define for example product information relating to the picture content. As picture is shown in target web site and a hovering is recognized an advertisement is created. According to embodiments store owners sets a separate second bids associated to different product owners or products. Advertisement content can comprise universal resource locator (URL).
In some embodiments the website reputation is checked prior selecting the advertisement content to the created advertisement. Reputation can be checked using data stored to a server which collects users' experience on web sites in world wide web (www-sites).
Additionally if the URL directs first to third-party tracking services, which record a user's click and then redirects the user to a content owner's website or to a store owner's website, the reputation of the site the user is redirected can be checked.
Further features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of preferred embodiments of the invention, given by way of example only, which is made with reference to the accompanying drawings.
As described above, embodiments of the invention are concerned with improving efficiency of performing acceptance and relevancy of advertisements and other additional information in web pages.
In one embodiment of the invention there is web content in web service S1, S3 or S7. An example of the service is web page with text 204 and pictures 202 as shown in
A content (picture, video) owner can associate tagbubble 30 to his content by accessing advertisement service server S5 via web interface over Interent 10.
One key element in providing advertisement services or other services using pop ups is monitoring if hovering has taken place or not. Said monitoring can be used as basis for billing for the services.
According to embodiment of invention new novel business model is enabled as shown in
Store owners 64 and product owners 60 can register in intags service 62. When registering to the service store owners 64 can upload information on which products they carry, related availability (inventory) information, pricing information and store location and business hours information to mention few. Store owners can also define budget (allocation of funds of M) for presenting their information in possible tagbubble. Budget can be based on per view, per click, per action etc, it can have daily limits and there can be variable pricing on actions. In one embodiment store owner can decide which part of allocated funds M is divided between intags 62 and product owner 60. For example store owner can allocate q=30% of the funds to store owner and (100%-q)=70% to go to in Tags 62. Allocation can be also defined by advertisement service provide. Allocation q can be dynamic i.e. it can vary depending on business rules. The allocation can also be different for different product store owner pairs. This is beneficial in business since in one embodiment tagbubble 30 is generated from unique product code information basis (such as EAN code). The product code is used to get as primary information about the product from product owner 60. By allowing store owner to allocate some of it's funds to product owner it gets to influence on which products are more visible in the advertisements. This helps product owner 60 for example in situation where it has overstock of certain products. Additionally store owners can define in the database which product (EAN codes) they carry enabling mapping of which stores carry which products.
Product owner 60 can define attributes for the products and services it is offering for consumers. It can also define budget N that it desires to use to promote goods and services. The money for the budget N comes either entirely from store owners (several store owners carrying the product) or product owner can deposit in system own funds as well (L) i.e. N can be L+qM (where qM should be understood to be sum of q1M1+q2M2, . . . +qnMn where index indicates ID of store owner contributing to product owner 60).
As picture with tagbubble is hovered both product owner and storeowner are invoiced depending on set parameters. According to some embodiments invoicing might take place after clicking shown advertisements instead or in addition to impression based invoicing. Revenues to advertisement service provider 62 would be N+(1−q)M on each action. Service provider 62 can share part of the revenue associated with content owner i.e. one who has provided with picture. Content owner could get (1−p)(N+(1−q)M)) of the revenues where p is revenue share percent for example 50%. Described business model embodiment enables to generate revenues from multiple sources and it will open new revenue opportunities for content owners. As an example freelance type of photographer could now offer any of the pictures for free to any web site owner such as CNN. When CNN embeds picture in the site it would include said tagbubble Java code snippet. Every time a user goes to CNN site and hovers over the picture (from freelancer) freelancer would get some revenues. There would be no need for CNN to pay royalties on the said picture (although they could). In further embodiments some of the revenues could be shared back to target web site (such as CNN). In one embodiment tagbubble shows product name such as Nike (if there is for example Nike shoe associated with tagbubble) and then info (map, name, phone number, click to call phone number, URL) of store owner which is giving largest share of allocated funds i.e qM is highest.
As an example embodiment advertisement to be presented in a pop up frame in a web site is created as show in
Database DB5 further contains advertisement content from plurality of advertisers such as phone manufactures Nokia, HTC and Apple (being in this example product owners) and telecom carriers (operators) Verizon, Sprint and AT&T (being in the example store owners). Advertisements could be for example logo of the company and/or some text and/or video and/or picture and/or link to desired target site of the advertiser.
Each advertiser can set (preferably via secured web interface) bid information relating to the advertisement content. In example of
When end user access web service running in server 51 hovers over advertisement area 702 or 704 of picture 700 a request of showing pop up advertisement related to hovered area is received by advertisement server system S5. As an example if end user hovers over area 704 “Smart phone” related advertisement will be shown to end user browsing the web site S1 with for example HTML content. For this example it is assumed that phones from HTC and Apple are so called “Smart phones”. Now according to embodiment table 730 is used to calculate which advertisement combination of Apple+(Verizon or Sprint or AT&T) or HTC+(Verizon or Sprint or AT&T) gives highest price for advertisement provider. Related amounts are:
Apple+Verizon=>$0.25+$0.2+$0.05=$0.5
Apple+Sprint=>$0.25+$0.3+$0.05=$0.6
Apple+AT&T=>$0.25+$0.25+$0.3=$0.8
HTC+Verizon=>$0.3+$0.2+$0.2=$0.7
HTC+Sprint=>$0.3+$0.3+$0.05=$0.65
HTC+AT&T=>$0.3+$0.25+$0.01=$0.56
Where the highest combination is Apple+AT&T resulting to shown in pop up ad of Apple product related advertisement 304 combined with AT&T store owner related advertisement 306. As benefit of the described model is that store owners can control which products they are associated with. For example in this example AT&T gets ad together with Apple due to allocated funds to product owner (in column Z2). In other words an advertisement is created by selecting and combining an advertisement of a product owner and an advertisement of a store owner, the selecting being based on comparing sum of the first, second and third bid amounts of bids set by store owners and product owners of which the second and third bid being allocated to the hovered product.
In other example end user hovers over area 702 of picture 700. The area 702 is defined as low end phone. As Nokia is only low end phone in an example in database it is evident that Nokia advertisement will be shown. According to embodiments of the invention other part i.e store owner part of the advertisement is calculated by adding to Nokia bid $0.2 First bids by each store owners (carriers) Verizon, Sprint and AT&T and their respective bids to product owner as well i.e.
Nokia+Verizon=>$0.2+$0.2+$0.1=$0.5
Nokia+Sprint=>$0.2+$0.3+$0.05=$0.55
Nokia+AT&T=>$0.2+$0.25+$0.1=$0.55
Giving as highest $0.55 for two combinations. Sprint or AT&T could be selected as round robin, randomly or according to looking on for example second bid i.e. column X2 and Z2 i.e. funds allocated to product owner. As AT&T is allocating most funds to Nokia it could be determined to be winner i.e combination of Nokia+AT&T advertisement would be shown in pop up frame.
Further according to embodiments of the invention allocated second bids i.e. Y2, X2 and Z2 columns in table 730 are not given as direct revenues to advertisement provider but are allocated as additional funds to product owner. This is particularly beneficial from product owner point of view due to lowering their advertisement budget. If product of product owner is such that all store owners want to be associated with there can be situation where product owner does not have to allocated funds at all or it can make money by allocations.
In a further embodiment selection of which advertisements to be shown can be done by using alternative measurements such as user preferences, location of user, location of user in respect to store owner facilities physical location, randomly, in round robin style etc. This is particularly beneficial in case of two or more bid information/amounts being same.
A further embodiment of the invention is shown in environment of
An example of such service could be Web on Trust (http://www.mywot.com) service where consumers rate web sites as they visit those. As the server S5 contacts server 810 it runs check on the database 820 for rating information on site S1. Additionally rating/trust service 810 could provide information on reliability or reported reliability of store owner which wants to advertise in the system. Trust server would return information to advertisements service S5 in step S8.4. Advertisement server would now decide in addition to business rules on which product owner and store owner to promote in the site if to promote any or only some store owners or some product owners. This is particularly important since for example product owners could define in trust server 810 database 820 some stores are not wanted by them to sell their products or could prefer one store over an other.
Additional examples of embodiments of the invention are shown in
Box 910 of
In box 920 of
In box 930 of
In box 940 of
The above embodiments are to be understood as illustrative examples of the invention. It is understood that any feature described in relation to any one embodiment may be used alone, or in combination with other features described, and may also be used in combination with one or more features of any other of the embodiments, or any combination of any other of the embodiments. Additionally some of the embodiments with certain steps can be executed in any order by any party. Some of the steps might not be needed in all cases of implementing the invention. Furthermore, equivalents and modifications no described above may also be employed without departing from the scope of the invention, which is defined in the accompanying claims.