Patent Application
20110015987
Micromarketing is the practice of tailoring products, brands, and promotions to meet the needs and wants of microsegments within a market. Micromarketing channels include Internet technology, such as email and any form of advertising on the World Wide Web (including targeted ads), as well as mobile technology including SMS and any form of advertising on mobile phones.
A major problem in mobile advertising is that advertising messages are viewed as spam, and clutter up SMS or MMS inboxes. Because the advertising messages also consume valuable memory, they cause users to delete or manage these messages (wasting their precious time) or cause users to subscribe to do-not-call or do-not-sms lists. According to Wireless Watch, Vol. 6, No 29, Oct. 15, 2008, half of those yet to deploy a mobile marketing campaign are concerned that their customers will view the text messages as spam.
Pull-based or subscription-based methods for mobile ads also present problems. They still result in cluttered SMS or MMS in-boxes, causing users to delete or manage the messages, and there is still the spam perception.
If it were possible to remove the spam perception of mobile marketing, and increase user-control, this would significantly increase the likelihood of users adopting and responding to mobile marketing of various kinds (push/pull, location/context aware, etc).
Various embodiments provide systems and methods for marketing to mobile devices (such as mobile phones and PDAs) where a marketing system is managed by a telecom operator (telco) or independent service provider.
Some aspects provide a method for marketing to mobile devices of users, the method comprising receiving marketing messages from vendors along with information identifying the locations of the vendors and information indicating when the respective marketing messages expire; starting a USSD session with a user's mobile device in response to a request from the user; providing a menu to the user's mobile device in the USSD session with which the user can view marketing messages; and automatically flushing expired marketing messages; wherein marketing messages are stored and managed by a telecom provider instead of being sent to a mobile device's in-box.
Other aspects provide a system for marketing to mobile devices of users, in which a user of a mobile device can pull advertisements of advertisers on-demand from a telecom provider, the system comprising a pull mechanism, using which a user of a mobile device can express an interest in fetching an advertisement, the pull mechanism including telecom equipment configured to receive a communication from the mobile device; a mechanism using which a user can indicate product categories of interest, using the mobile device; a system configured to record information relating to purchases by the user; and an advertisement matching system configured to match advertisements to customers based on a plurality of real time attributes including at least one real time attribute selected from the group consisting of location of the user and product categories of interest to the user, as well as based on parameters of the telecom provider and parameters of the advertisers.
Still other aspects provide a method of marketing to mobile devices of users from a telecom operator, the method comprising receiving a telecom contact from a user of a mobile device, the contact indicating an interest in fetching an advertisement, and receiving product categories of interest to the user; matching a user with at least one advertisement based on at least some of product categories of interest to the user and a location of interest to the user; selecting at least one advertisement relevant to the user and based on at least one metric of interest to the advertiser as well based on at least one metric of interest to the telecom operator; and delivering at least one advertisement to the mobile device. Other methods and apparatus are also provided.
In the illustrated embodiment, for example, marketing messages such as coupons from vendors (e.g., retailers, manufacturers, restaurants, malls, service providers, etc.) that are partners of the telecom provider 12 are made available to a user. In some embodiment, these marketing messages are made available from time to time or periodically, such as weekly. In some embodiments, only coupons in the local area (e.g., in nearby zip codes, only in the user's home zip code, or within a radius, such as a 5 mile radius of the user's home, present location, or of the user's residential address or billing address zip code) will be made available. A user can select a zip code (or specify a locality keyword) and get coupons for that zip code or locality keyword, organized by the user's customized browsing preferences.
In some embodiments, all users are automatically signed on to receive marketing messages, and there is no explicit sign-on process.
In the illustrated embodiment, invalid and/or expired coupons are automatically flushed out. This can be done, for example, by identifying (detecting) strings such as “valid upto” or “expires on” provided in the coupons.
When the user is interested in coupons, he or she gives a missed call 26 from his or her mobile device or phone 28, 30, 32 etc. to a published or advertised (e.g., well-known) phone number. The missed call is of low cost to the user. Alternatively, in some embodiments, when the user is interested in coupons, he or she sends a USSD short code from his or her mobile device 28, 30, 32, etc. to the marketing message management system 22 via the network 14. This is Thus, this is an opt-in approach.
In some embodiments, the system 22 uses a missed call 26 as a trigger to start a unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) session with the user and display a personalized menu for the user to browse coupons. Unstructured supplementary service data is a capability of all GSM phones. Unstructured supplementary service data is a simple text exchange service allowing the display of menus on a mobile phone and enabling users to interact with these menus. USSD Phase 1 only supports mobile initiated operations (pull operations), but USSD Phase 2 supports network-initiated operations (both pull and push operations). The missed call or SMS is trapped via a telecom interface (like Parlay-X or SMSC) and the missed call triggers a USSD session offering a personalized coupon browsing menu. Other ways to trigger coupons could be employed in other embodiments.
Users can “clip” coupons of interest. In some embodiments, a user can put clipped coupons of interest in a separate folder and later use them in-store or in a remote interaction (via phone or internet) with the coupon-issuing vendor.
In some embodiments, if a vendor or retailer is not a telecom partner, a user can forward 20 an SMS ad or coupon received from a vendor entity to the system 22 using the same phone number (or short-code) via the network 14, and SMSC or MMSC 16. The provider 12 traps future SMS messages from that vendor and the system 22 then manages those messages.
In some embodiments, a user of a mobile device 28, 30, or 32 can forward coupons to friends, and this information is automatically trapped and managed by the system 22 (if the friend uses the same operator 12), with a notification SMS being sent to the friend's mobile device.
In some embodiments, a user can select “favorite” retailers or categories while viewing merchants (menu item 3 in
In the illustrated embodiment, the user can select a zip code (or specify a locality keyword) after selecting menu option 3 in
A vendor or retailer can apply a coupon such as by sending a coupon number to the system 22 from a vendor device 34 such as a vendor mobile device 34, 36, 38, etc. via USSD or SMS, or from a point of sale terminal using a POS application, in some embodiments. In other embodiments, a vendor can communicate with the system 22 in additional or other ways to apply a coupon, such as through a telephone call, or from a computer or point of sale terminal via the Internet, satellite, telephone land line, or other connection. In the illustrated embodiment, the coupon encashment is reflected immediately in the user's account. More particularly, the coupon encashment is thus reflected immediately in the system 22, when the retailer applies a coupon by sending the coupon number or other identifying indicia to the system 22 via USSD, SMS, or a POS-application.
Thus, systems and methods for managing marketing messages and coupons in a telecommunications network have been provided where marketing messages from preferred partners or user-indicated sources are filtered and managed by a telecom provider rather than sent as (and perceived as) spam into SMS or MMS mobile phone in-boxes. Conventional advertisements delivered to a phone via SMS, MMS, or email clutter a user's inbox and are perceived as spam. On the other hand, in some of the embodiments provided here, including embodiments described in connection with
The system 102 further includes a pricing mechanism 112, used by the mobile micro marketing system 108 to set the costs for advertising campaigns. In some embodiments, the pricing mechanism 112 uses a pay per impression approach. In other embodiments, the pricing mechanism 112 uses a pay per transaction approach. In a pay per transaction approach, the amount to be charged, in some embodiments, is decided based upon auction rules. In other embodiments, the amount to be charged in a pay per transaction approach is based upon some other heuristic.
In some embodiments, the mobile micro marketing system 108 makes use of real time contextual attributes 114, that will be described below.
The feedback tracking mechanism 110 can be any system which enables measuring the transactions triggered due to the ads or promotional offers sent by the system 102. In some embodiments, customers are issued loyalty cards which need to be presented at checkout in order for a customer to receive a discount indicated in an ad. The cards are scanned at checkout, or a number from the card is input into an input device or point of sale terminal which communicates with the system 108, to provide feedback tracking. Thus, the input device or point of sale terminal can define part of the feedback tracking mechanism.
In some embodiments, illustrated in
In various feedback tracking embodiments, some incentive (e.g. talk time) is provided to customers if they report their transactions.
With regard to the ad matching system 182, the inventors have recognized that the objectives of different stakeholders are different. The telecom provider wants to maximize the revenue; advertisers or vendors want to maximize the number of transactions per unit of money spent; and users want maximum relevance of ads. For users, the number of ads to be sent is limited by screen size. A successful system must address all these needs at the same time. In some embodiments, the ad matching system 182 can operate using one or both of the following:
In some embodiments, the ad matching system 182 uses at least some of the principles described in the paper entitled “CAESAR: A Context-Aware, Social Recommender System for Low-End Mobile Devices” by Lakshmish Ramaswamy et al., International Conference on Mobile Systems, Services and Middleware, Taipei, Taiwan, May 18-20, 2009, incorporated herein by reference.
The following table provides an example of the type of data that can be stored in the feedback records 122 or 134 of
In various embodiments, the mining system 184 of
The system 300 includes a memory device or memory devices defining databases or otherwise arranged to store data for at least some of the following: customers' requests for pulling ads 304, footfalls and transactions induced by ads 312, customers' demographic data 314, customers' ad preferences 316, customers' current location data 318, call recording data 320, and ads delivered to customers 322, any of which can be used by the offline data mining system 184 to define knowledge or facts 324 that can be used by the ad matching system 182.
To better enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention, one possible end to end implementation will now be provided. It is to be understood that this specific embodiment is provided by way of example only and that other embodiments are possible.
First, a telecom provider issues loyalty cards and maintains records including records of which loyalty card number is associated with which mobile phone number. The mobile users can use the loyalty cards while shopping at any retail outlet which is part of the telco-retail network. The users get special discounts from the retailers on their purchases. For respective purchases, user get some reward points accumulated in their account which can be redeemed against free talk time. The card can be jointly offered by a bank and telecom provider such that the card can be used as a credit card also.
Next, a product category catalog is defined and advertisers specify a price per impression for each ad campaign. The following table provides an example of how different vendors can set different budgets for ad campaigns.
A telecom provider creates and maintains the product category catalog. An advertiser can maintain a local replica of this catalog either on a computer or on a mobile phone. The catalog can be refreshed periodically, such as once per day. The advertisers use the local replica to pick a product category while creating an ad campaign. An advertiser can create an ad campaign, for example, by filling in a form on the Internet (e.g., using a Web Browser) or using a mobile phone. This form will contain the fields shown in the table above. The telecom provider uses this ad campaign database in real time to match ads dispatched to the incoming ad requests.
A system has been proposed that benefits all stakeholders. In some embodiments, end users get a spot discount and/or a reward point or points (i.e., redeemable for free talk time). Advertisers benefit from having higher footfalls. In some embodiments, advertisers can track how many footfalls each ad campaign brought and the price paid per footfall for each ad campaign. An advertiser can create multiple ad campaigns and divide a daily budget across these campaigns and also adjust the PPI values for these ad campaigns so as to maximize overall utility for the advertiser. The telecom provider is earning money by matching demand and supply and paying some fraction of this revenue in order to give incentives to the users to fuel this business model by creating demand for the ads.
Various alternative embodiments provide an auction house approach which will now be described, by way of example.
(a) For a request for ads, such as a 2222 request (or other predetermined code), one or both of the following are performed: (i) If a user has not specified product categories, find product categories using the static profile of the user. (ii) Find product categories of the user's friend or friends (determine friends using from call data) from the friends' static records. Use (a)(i) and (a)(ii) and find a set of product categories which the user might be most interested in.
(b) For each selected product category, find ads which satisfy some basic constraints such as the vendor being located close enough to the user's current location. For each of these ads, (i) compute the probability of the user buying products from this vendor by looking at various trends or facts related to this product category, vendor, and this user as well as his/her friends (produced by the data mining unit); and (ii) compute the relevance ranking by multiplying the probability determined in (b)(i) with the bid value to give expected revenue that can be earned if a coupon is issued for that product.
(c) Rank the ads of (b) in decreasing order of their relevance ranking.
(d) The advertiser (telecom provider) can be paid by a vendor an amount as suggested by an auction scheme such as the second price auction scheme (the highest bidder wins, but the price paid is the second-highest bid). The amount will be paid only when the customer makes a purchase from the vendor and that is reported to the telecom provider. The advertisers will have incentive in doing so because this will boost the corresponding probability and hence will let them bid low amounts even for the same level of footfalls.
In other embodiments, the pricing could be flat pricing also where the telecom provider gets a fixed amount for each display. In this case the relevance score can be measured by the looking at tradeoffs between the current revenue gain versus expected future losses that will accrue because of this customer becoming too annoyed with this ad and hence not using this service in future or reducing the frequency of using this service.
Various other alternative embodiments to the auction system and the general system described in connection with
In some embodiments, use of SMS to trigger the pull mechanism can be replaced with many other channels such as missed call, IVR, call center, Internet (Email/Browser), etc.
In some embodiments, a data mining based system is employed using which a customer can get help if they are not sure about what category ads to pull or if they are not clear about their shopping needs.
An advertiser may have a fixed budget for the mobile advertising and may want to create several different campaigns and want to assign the impression price or bid and the daily budget for all of them. In these embodiments, an ad portfolio management assistant is provided for the advertisers which will guide them through this process.
In some embodiments, a mobile search engine is provided where users can use a query word or phrase and the system will only pull ads relevant for the query word or phrase. Thus, a search engine will be a combination of the ad matching device described above and an information resources based search engine.
Thus, systems and methods have been provided that incorporate real time attributes of customers and also allow the advertisers to express various parameters about their campaign, which may vary in real time (e.g., discount amount, bids, budgets, etc.).
In some embodiments, information is used in the process of real-time matching by optimizing on interests of the three parties involved in the process—the advertiser, the customer and the telecom provider (or third party provider) which provides the service of supplying advertisements. In some embodiments, after the matching is completed, there is a process of real-time tracking of purchase footfalls triggered by the ads and, using this information back in the matching process, in the process ensuring fair-value co-creation. Various embodiments provide effective matching of customers to advertisements, while effectively using a telecom provider as the delivery channel. Any combination or sub-combination of features or steps described in connection with
In some embodiments, a vendor offers a solution to a telecom operator for providing a service to advertisers and customers of the telco. Advertisers benefit because of the flexible advertising campaigns possible for which they can track ROI, and customers benefit by ads being more relevant.
Embodiments of the invention can take the form of entirely hardware elements, entirely software elements or an combination containing both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, embodiments of the invention are implemented as software elements, which include but are not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, etc.
Furthermore, embodiments of the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system. For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computer readable medium can be any apparatus that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device) or a propagation medium. Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk-read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers.
Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modems and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
The description set out above describes particular embodiments only and is not intended to limit the invention, whose scope is determined solely by the claims set out below. As used here, singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.
In compliance with the patent statutes, the subject matter disclosed herein has been described in language more or less specific as to structural and methodical features. However, the scope of protection sought is to be limited only by the following claims, given their broadest possible interpretations. The claims are not to be limited by the specific features shown and described, as the description above only discloses example embodiments.
