Patent Application
20050216335
The invention relates in general to Web-based advertising and, in particular, to a system and method for providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising.
Although the origins of the Internet trace back to the late 1960s, the more recently-developed Worldwide Web (“Web”) has revolutionized accessibility to untold volumes of information in stored electronic form. In particular, the Web provides an attractive opportunity to individual advertisers and businesses who wish to reach a potentially large audience at low cost.
Effective on-line advertising through the Web requires some form of notice or announcement describing a product or service offering in a manner analogous to television, radio and printed media. On the Web, advertisements can be provided as Web pages, which can also contain hyperlinks to a virtual shopping cart, email addresses, and other helpful information. However, Web-based advertisements, or simply, advertisements, must also be coupled with means to drive Web traffic via the advertisement. One approach to driving Web traffic is provided through the placement of advertising creatives on other Web pages, such as results generated by search engines, Web pages targeted by advertising engines, and general Web content. A typical advertising creative, or simply, “creative,” is a description of a product or service potentially containing text, images and other content that can be added to an existing Web page and that will direct a user to a Web page.
Web-based advertising poses a unique set of challenges, particularly with respect to individual advertisers. First, generating successful advertising creatives that effectively drive Web traffic requires significant time, effort and expertise. The Web is primarily a printed medium and creatives must often fit within limited display space, which can be difficult for novice advertisers to achieve while still providing essential content. Moreover, providing salient and relevant creatives can be challenging, particularly when a creative is displayed with other competing creatives and unrelated but distracting Web content.
Web-based advertisements are only effective if made available to a target pool of potential buyers. Web advertising can be targeted or tied to Web content by attaching creatives, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/676,195, entitled “System and Method for Automatically Targeting Web-Based Advertisements,” filed Sep. 30, 2003, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. In most cases, however, the individual advertiser must generally specify selection criteria, frequently by providing a set of keywords for use in targeting, which will hopefully attract potential buyers. Users can also find the selection of keywords challenging. For example, searching for Web content using a query containing the search term “mouse” can generate documents describing tiny long-tailed rodents, cartoon characters, and computer pointing devices.
Placing creatives and advertisements on-line for access by the general Web community can be especially problematic for individual or small advertisers. Advertising creatives must be integrated into other Web content to effectively drive Web traffic, but advertisers are generally not able to unilaterally add creatives to other Web pages. A third party Web content provider, such as a search or advertising engine, is needed. Small advertisers may not have an online Web presence, and, therefore, traditional Web advertising that drives Web traffic to the Web site of the advertiser is not possible.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach to providing Web-based user-assisted advertising. Preferably, such an approach would guide a user in the creation of advertisements describing offerings of goods or services, creatives associated with the advertisements, and advertising budgets. Such an approach would also help create and host a Web presence for individual and other advertisers. Such an approach would also facilitate driving Web traffic to hyperlinked advertisements through targeting.
An embodiment provides a system and method for providing on-line advertising. An interface guiding on-line advertising creation is presented. An advertisement is created from at least one of user inputs and stored data and includes information describing at least one item. An advertising creative is generated in association with the advertisement and includes a hyperlink reference to the advertisement. The advertisement is hosted on-line as a Web page and the advertising creative is placed on one or more targeted Web pages. In a further embodiment, an advertising budget specifying compensation for on-line display of the advertising creative is determined.
Still other embodiments of the invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, wherein are described embodiments of the invention by way of illustrating the best mode contemplated for carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and detailed description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.
FIGS. 3A-F are screen shots showing, by way of example, Web pages providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising.
System Overview
Each client computer 12 can be any form of computing platform connectable to a network, such as the internetwork 10, and capable of interacting with application programs. Examples of individual clients include, without limitation, personal computers, digital assistants, “smart” cellular telephones and pagers, lightweight clients, workstations, “dumb” terminals interfaced to an application server, and various arrangements and configurations thereof, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art. The internetwork 10 includes various topologies, configurations, and arrangements of network interconnectivity components arranged to interoperatively couple with enterprise, wide area and local area networks and include, without limitation, conventionally wired, wireless, satellite, optical, and equivalent network technologies, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art.
For Web content retrieval, each client computer 12 executes a Web browser 18 (“Browser”). Web content 23 is requested via a Web server 20 executing on the server 11. In addition, advertisements (“Ads”) 24 can be provided with the Web content 23, and other content 25 via an advertisement server (“Ad Server”) 21 also executing on the server 11. The advertisement server 21 can target the advertisements 24 for inclusion with or in lieu of the Web content 23, and other content 25, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/676,195, entitled “System and Method for Automatically Targeting Web-Based Advertisements,” filed Sep. 30, 2003, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. Other types of server functionality can be provided, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art. Note the Web browsing and advertising functions could also be implemented separately as stand alone applications.
The server 11 maintains an attached storage device 15 in which the Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25 are stored. The Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25 could also be maintained remotely on other Web servers (not shown) interconnected either directly or indirectly via the internetwork 10 and which are preferably accessible by each client computer 12.
A search engine 22 executes on the server 11 for processing queries for Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25. Each query is meant to describe or otherwise identify information potentially retrievable via the Web server 20. The information can include other information also determined to be relevant to the query. In one embodiment, each query provides characteristics, typically expressed as terms, including individual words and compounds. The search engine 22 receives a query, identifies matching Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25, and sends back results conforming to the query preferences. Other styles, forms or definitions of queries, query characteristics, and related metadata are feasible, as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art.
In one embodiment, the search engine 22 identifies the Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25 determined to be highly relevant in relation to a given set of search query terms, for example, using such techniques as described in S. Brin and L. Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine” (1998) and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999, issued Sep. 4, 2001 to Page, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference. In identifying matching Web content 23, advertisements 24, and other content 25, the search engine 22 operates on information characteristics describing potentially retrievable content. Note the functionality provided by the server 20, including the Web server 20, advertising server 21, and search engine 22, could be provided by a loosely- or tightly-coupled distributed or parallelized computing configuration, in addition to a uniprocessing environment.
The individual computer systems, including server 11 and client computers 12, include general purpose, programmed digital computing devices including a central processing unit (processors 13 and 16, respectively), random access memory (memories 14 and 17, respectively), non-volatile secondary storage 15, such as a hard drive or CD ROM drive, network or wireless interfaces, and peripheral devices, including user interfacing means, such as a keyboard and display. Program code, including software programs, and data is loaded into the RAM for execution and processing by the CPU and results are generated for display, output, transmittal, or storage.
Process Flow
In certain embodiments, each operation 41 is presented to the user 19 through a Web interface. FIGS. 3A-E are screen shots showing, by way of example, Web pages providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising according to an embodiment of the invention. Referring first to
Referring next to
Referring next to
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In other embodiments of the invention, the hosted Web page is not restricted to, and indeed does not necessarily contain, an advertisement of a form, such as described with reference to
Referring finally to
Advertising Generation Engine
The advertising generation engine 101 maintains a connection to a storage device 111 storing statistics 112. In one embodiment, performance statistics 112 are generated by the advertising server 21, search engine 22 for existing on-line advertisements 24. The advertising generation engine 101 provides the statistics 112 to the user for consideration while building an advertisement 107 and advertising creative 107. Other types of information relating to on-line advertising could also be maintained in the storage 111.
Briefly, the advertising generation engine 101 assists a user 19 in building an advertisement 107 and an advertising creative 108 based on user inputs 105 or, optionally, stored data 106. The advertising generation engine 101 can also assist a user 19 in specifying an advertising budget 110. The advertising generation engine 101 includes an advertisement generator 102, advertising creative generator 103, and advertising budget specifier 104. The advertisement generator 102 collects and assembles user inputs 105 and, optionally, stored data 106, for use in generating advertisements 107, which are provided as Web pages 90 (shown in
Similarly, the creative generator 103 collects and assembles additional user inputs 105 and, optionally, stored data 106, to generate advertising creatives 108. The creative generator 103 can also use the item description 109 specified by the advertisement generator 102 as a basis for advertising creatives 108. In a further embodiment, advertising creatives are automatically generated from structured data, including the item description 109, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/725,883, entitled “System and Method for Providing Text Summarization for Use in Web-Based Content,” filed Dec. 1, 2003, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference.
Finally, the advertising budget specifier 104 creates an advertising budget 110, which is used by the advertising engine 21 when displaying the advertising creative 108. The advertising budget specifier 104 collects and assembles additional user inputs 105 and, optionally, stored data 106, to determine the advertising budget 110.
The advertisement generator 102 builds an advertisement 107 as a Web page using a predefined Web-based format. The advertisement generator 102 also generates one or more advertising creatives 108 as Web content that can be added to a Web page. Each advertisement 107 can include an item name and a body containing an extended item name, description, price, category name, advertiser contact information, or other content. Each advertising creative 108 is associated with the advertisement 107 and can include information extracted from or related to the item description 109, as well as other information, such as an eye-catching image, that might assist in driving Web traffic to the associated advertisement 107.
In one embodiment, each advertisement 107 is provided as Web content written in a suitable variant of a hypertext markup language, such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Although described with reference to product offerings, the advertisement 107 can also be used to describe service or combined product and service offerings. Thus, the terms “product” and “service” are considered interchangeable and, except as expressly provided otherwise, apply equally to either or both product and service offerings.
The individual computer system, including the advertising generation engine 101, include general purpose, programmed digital computing devices including a central processing unit, random access memory, non-volatile secondary storage 61, such as a hard drive or CD ROM drive, network or wireless interfaces, and peripheral devices, including user interfacing means, such as a keyboard and display. Program code, including software programs, and data is loaded into the RAM for execution and processing by the CPU and results are generated for display, output, transmittal, or storage.
Advertising Server
The advertising server 21 maintains a connection to the storage device 111 storing statistics 112 and, optionally, the Web content 23. The statistics 112 are generated by the advertising server 21 or search engine 22 (not shown) for existing on-line advertisements 24. The advertising server 21 provides the statistics 112 to the advertiser for consideration while creating an advertisement 107 and advertising creative 107. In one embodiment, the statistics 112 reflect the frequency that an advertising creative 108 is shown to and selected by users. Other statistics and types of information relating to on-line advertising could also be maintained in the storage 111.
The advertising server 21 includes a targeting component 115 that identifies, that is, targets, advertisements 107 relative to the query 116. In one embodiment, the identified advertisements 107 are scored preferably according to the degree of match between the terms in the query and the information and characteristics specified in the identified advertisements 107, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/676,195, entitled “System and Method for Automatically Targeting Web-Based Advertisements,” filed Sep. 30, 2003, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. A numerical score can be assigned to the identified advertisements 107 based on the degree of match and the identified advertisements 107 can be ranked by numerical score. The advertising server 21 then provides one or more of the advertising creatives 108 associated with the selected and ranked advertisements 107 as Web content included on targeted Web pages 125. The advertising server 21 can also pass non-targeted Web pages 126 through without the addition of advertising creatives 108. Other forms of targeting of advertisements 107, as well as introduction of advertising creatives 108, are possible, as would be appreciated by one skilled in the art.
Method Overview
First, a user 19 is guided through creating an advertisement 107 and an associated creative 108, plus an advertising budget 110 (block 131), as further described below with reference to
User Guiding Routine
First, an item to be advertised in an advertisement 107 for goods or services is described (block 137), as further described below with reference to
Advertisement Creation Routine
If the item description 109 is based on user inputs 105 (block 141), the user inputs 105 are received (block 142) as the item description 109 from the user 19, such as through a product information screen 61 (shown in
Advertising Creative Generation Routine
In one embodiment, the advertising creative 108 can be automatically generated from the item description 109, such as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/725,883, entitled “System and Method for Providing Text Summarization for Use in Web-Based Content,” filed Dec. 1, 2003, pending, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. Otherwise, if the advertising creative 108 is based on user inputs 105 (block 151), the user inputs 105 are received (block 152) as the advertising creative 108 from the user 19, such as through a budget specification screen 71 (shown in
Advertising Budget Specification Routine
Thus, if the user 19 indicates a cost charged per impression through an advertising budget specification interface 92 (block 161), the cost per impression 97 is obtained (block 162). Similarly, if the user 19 indicates a cost charged per click (block 163), the cost per click 99 is obtained (block 164). If the user 19 indicates a cost charged by conversion (block 165), the cost by conversion 101 is obtained (block 166). If the user 19 indicates a cost charged per some other type of cost (block 167), the cost is obtained (block 168). The total costs chargeable to the user 19 are calculated (block 169) and the routine returns.
While the invention has been particularly shown and described as referenced to the embodiments thereof, those skilled in the art will understand that the foregoing and other changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
