Patent Application
20090287566
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to displaying of advertisements to Internet users, and more particularly, not displaying advertisements strongly disliked by Internet users.
2. Description of the Related Art
On-line advertising is used by advertisers to accomplish various business goals, ranging from building brand awareness among potential customers to facilitating on-line purchases of products or services. A number of different types of page-based or video-based online advertisements are currently in use, along with various associated distribution requirements, advertising metrics, and pricing mechanisms. As is well known, technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) enable formatting to define location and presentation of selected advertisements.
An example of on-line advertisements is banner advertisement (or ad). A banner advertisement typically features an image (animated or static) and/or text displayed at a predetermined position in a page. The banner advertisement usually takes the form of a horizontal rectangle at the top of the page, but it can also be arranged in a variety of other shapes and other locations on the page. If a user clicks on the banner advertisement's location, image, and/or text, the user is taken to a new page (a landing page) that may provide detailed information regarding the products or services associated with the banner advertisement. Banner advertisement space is sold in a number of ways. Exemplary ways include a guaranteed number of impressions, performance-based, etc. Other types of on-line advertisements, such as pop-up ads, text ads, and video ads, are also commonly used. Pop-up ads appear in new web browser windows when a user accesses a new web page. Text ads appear alongside search results and are related to the search word(s) entered by the user. Video ads play videos when users open new web pages or when users click on the video ads.
Some on-line advertisements are offensive or annoying to Internet users. Some on-line advertisements take users to landing pages that have nothing to do with advertisements described earlier. For example, a user clicks on an advertisement (or ad) that is described as being related to “insurance,” but the landing page displays a pornographic page or gambling site. When these types of advertisements are displayed to Internet users, they create a bad user experience. Additionally, users can feel very uncomfortable with certain ads. As a consequence, users feel less trusting about the sites that offer these types of advertisements. If a site continues to offer ads that are strongly disliked by users, users might decide to leave the site for good, or might feel less willing to visit the site in the future.
It is in this context that embodiments of the present invention arise.
Broadly speaking, the present invention fills the need of avoiding the display of advertisements that are strongly disliked by users. Displaying advertisements that are strongly disliked (or offend), web sites stand the chance of driving users away or losing users. By allowing users to identify advertisements that offend or annoy (or are strongly disliked by them), web sites can configure the systems so that offensive or annoying advertisements are not displayed to the users in the future. In addition, when a user is seriously turned off by an advertisement, the user is more likely to indicate his/her dislike toward the advertisement (ad). The user is also likely to give a reason as to why he/she does not like the ad, and could be willing to provide further information on what types of ads are also liked or disliked by the user. User input can then be collected, enabling custom application of the user's preference for certain types of advertisements.
It should be appreciated that the present invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a method, a system, or a device. Several inventive embodiments of the present invention are described below.
In one embodiment, a method of removing an advertisement disliked by a user from a web page of a web site is provided. The method includes receiving a request from the user to open the web page of the web site, and displaying an advertisement in the web page opened for the user based on the request. The method also includes receiving an input from the user indicating a dislike of the advertisement that was displayed. The method further includes removing the advertisement that was displayed and disliked by the user.
In another embodiment, a method of recording inputs of users on advertisements to prevent displaying advertisements that are known to be disliked by the users is provided. The method includes displaying an advertisement in a web page opened for the user based on a request from the user. The method also includes receiving an input from the user indicating a preference of the advertisement displayed. The input from the user is saved in at least one database. The method further includes displaying a plurality of advertisements in another web page for the user to indicate preferences of the user on the plurality of advertisements displayed in the other web page to gain insight of preferences of advertisements of the user. In addition, the method includes receiving inputs from the user indicating the preference of the user on the plurality of advertisements displayed on the other web page. The inputs are saved in the at least one database. Additionally, the method includes analyzing the at least one database containing the inputs from the user to select advertisements to display to the user. The inputs indicate the preferences of advertisements of the user. The analysis of the at least one database prevents displaying advertisements that are known to be disliked by the user. The method also includes displaying the advertisements that are selected to the user.
In another embodiment, a system for recording inputs of users on advertisements to prevent displaying advertisements that are disliked by the users is provided. The system includes an advertisement server storing advertisements to be displayed in web pages. The system also includes a user profile server storing information of the users. The system further includes an advertisement-preference server storing information regarding the user preference for advertisements. The information includes user identifications with advertisements that are disliked by the corresponding user identifications. The advertisement-preference server is integrated with the user profile server and the advertisement server to prevent displaying advertisements that are disliked by the users.
In yet another embodiment, computer readable media including program instructions for recording inputs of users on advertisements to prevent displaying advertisements that are known to be disliked by the users are provided. The computer readable media include program instructions for displaying an advertisement in a web page opened for the user based on a request from the user. The computer readable media also include program instructions for receiving an input from the user indicating a preference of the advertisement displayed. The input from the user is saved in at least one database. The computer readable media further include program instructions for displaying a plurality of advertisements in another web page for the user to indicate preferences of the user on the plurality of advertisements displayed in the other web page to gain insight of preferences of advertisements of the user. In addition, the computer readable media include program instructions for receiving inputs from the user indicating the preference of the user on the plurality of advertisements displayed on the other web page. The inputs are saved in the at least one database. Additionally, the computer readable media include program instructions for analyzing the at least one database containing the inputs from the user. The inputs indicate the preferences of advertisements of the user, to select advertisements to display to the user. The analysis of the at least one database prevents displaying advertisements that are known to be disliked by the user. The computer readable media also includes program instructions for displaying the advertisements that are selected to the user.
Other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the invention.
The present invention will be readily understood by the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, and like reference numerals designate like structural elements.
As described above, some on-line advertisements are offensive or annoying to Internet users. Advertisements (Ads) that take users to landing pages that have nothing to do with advertisements described in the Ad titles can seriously annoy users. As described in the example above, a user will be displeased when a user clicks on an advertisement for “insurance,” and the user is taken to a landing page having pornography, gambling, or some other topic. When misleading advertisements are displayed to Internet users, the user experience is tarnished. In fact, some users could feel very uncomfortable with certain ads, which lead to less trust in the originating site. Sometimes, users may leave the sites that offer such ads immediately upon viewing such ads or feel less willing to visit the sites in the future. Non-misleading ads can also annoy or offend users. For example, some ads have jumpy images, which are designed to attract users' attention, but in sum are very annoying to many users.
On-line users are very valuable to web sites. As a general rule, commercial web sites prefer to have as many users visiting their sites as possible, especially portals, social-networking web sites, and web sites dealing with on-line business. These web sites would also like to keep users on their sites for as long as possible, and hope that they will return often. In practicality, web sites want to display many advertisements to users, but they also do not want advertisements that create a bad user experience. Requests for displaying advertisements come from different advertisers, although some advertisers may offer web sites that are of poor quality or poor taste. For this reason, some advertisers must qualify their ads with a web site to confirm an acceptable landing page. After qualification, a bad advertiser may switch to other unacceptable (or undesirable) landing pages after being qualified. For example, a pornographic site might get qualified by a portal, such as Yahoo!, by an acceptable title, link, and a clean landing page. But, once being qualified by the portal, such as Yahoo!, an unacceptable landing page is shown to users when users click on the link of the advertisement on the portal. When this happens, users of the portal, such as Yahoo!, might become very angry at the portal or become less trusting of the portal, which is not desirable to the portal. Web sites, including the portal, want to keep the users happy so they continue using the site, not angry, risking the possibility of turning away future visitors.
In some instances, displaying undesirable ads to users is done un-intentionally. Some web sites display ads to users based on user profiles that the web sites collect, through user inputs, or clicking patterns. However, user profiles do not catch all details and web sites might display advertisements, which are considered offensive to some users, un-intentionally. For example, someone very religious that considers alcohol as a “forbidden” beverage, could see an ad of alcohol as being offensive. The web site that displays such an ad to the such a user might have collected some user profile of the user, but the profile is not detailed enough to include the user's strong dislike of alcohol or ads related to alcohol.
When users encounter ads that they strongly dislike, currently users can only close the browser windows having such ads. At best, users can send an email to the web site administrator(s) to complain about the poor user experience related to seeing ads that they strongly dislike (or hate). However, user complaints might not result in any action taken by the web site. In addition, even if the web site administrator(s) relay such information to the group in charge of on-line advertisements, the linkage (or correlation) between the users who complain about the ads and the ads, is lost. The web site could use such input to weed out misleading ads, but the web site would not be able to stop displaying ads that are offensive based on the users' taste (e.g. the alcohol ad to the religious person described above). It would be desirable to have a method and a system that allow users to identify ads that they dislike (or hate), to allow the ad-providing system to stop showing such ads.
When User-1 clicks on Ad-1 (or advertisement 105), an advertisement (or ad) browser window (or web page) 110 appears, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The browser window 110 shows the landing page 111 of Ad-1, as shown in
User-1 can also click on a button 112 to close the window 110. If User-1 clicks on the “Hate this Ad!” button 150, the system of the web site that displays such an ad, Ad-1, to User-1 can collect this information and can be configured not to display this ad to User-1 again, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. In another embodiment, the system of the web site that displays Ad-1 to User-1 can close the browser window 110 of Ad-1 immediately after User-1 clicks on the “Hate this Ad!” button 150. In yet another embodiment, the system of the web site that displays Ad-1 to User-1 can place a different ad in the browser window 110 to replace Ad-1, as shown in
In addition to closing Ad-1 and/or replacing Ad-1 with an alternative ad, Ad-1, a browser window 160 can appear, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in
In one embodiment, below the selection field 162, there is an additional information button 163, which contains an exemplary description of “Help Us Identify What Types of Ads Bother you!” If User-1 clicks on button 163, a browser window 180 appears, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in
Near the top of browser window 180, there is a description field 185, with description of “Tell Us How Much You Love or Hate the Ads below. You Inputs will Help Us Know What types of Ads you Strongly Dislike and We Won't Show Them to You in the Future!” The incentive for users to provide inputs is seeing less or none of the annoying ads in the future, in the embodiment shown in
In one embodiment, these inputs from the users can be analyzed by a system to identify trends of users' preference and common traits in ads that bothers certain groups of users. In one embodiment, there is a “more” button 187 near the bottom of window 180. User-1 can push the “more” button 187 to get additional windows (or pages) with ads, which are similar to window 180, to provide inputs on ads. Alternative, User-1 can push a “Love this Ad!” button 155 in browser window 100 to indicate that he/she really love the ad that is displayed in front of him/her. After User-1 presses the “Love this Ad!” button, browser windows similar to windows 160 and 180 can appear to gather more insight into why User-1 love (or like) the ad.
In addition, system 250 has a user ad-preference server 254, which stores information regarding users' ad preference. For example, the information stored in server 254 includes identities of users, advertisements viewed by users, the scores that represent (or reflect) how much the users like or dislike the corresponding ads. In one embodiment, the information also includes the reason why the users like or dislike the ads.
The user identity information in user identity column 221 can be collected by cookies of users or by other means. The scores in the score column 223 are used to indicate how much the users like or dislike the ads. For example, a “−5” to “+5” score can be used to rank how much the user likes or dislikes an ad. “−5” can be used to indicate that the user strongly dislikes (or hates) the ad and “+5” can be used to indicate the user strongly likes the ad. Other values or symbols can also be used to represent the scores. When User-1 presses the “Hate this Ad!” button 250 after viewing Ad-1, Ad-1 is given a “−5” score by User-1. In one embodiment, User-1's cookie, the identity of the ad “Ad-1”, and a “−5” score of information stream 203, are sent to the system 250 of the web site, as shown in
Administrators for the user ad-preference server 254 can analyze data in the user ad-preference server 254, such as data in Table 220, to gain insight into what ads offends or irritate users. For example, when an ad is newly launched, if the first 5 out of 10 users who see the ad press the “Hate this Ad!” button, the system administrator of ads can set up the ad system that temporarily suspends the questionable ad and to further examine the ad before deciding to release the ad again or to suspend the ad permanently. This prevents a bad ad from being viewed by many more users and to annoy many users. The web site can gain by protecting its own reputation since additional many users are prevented from being annoyed The first 5 out of 10 numbers used above are merely used as an example. Other numbers or thresholds can also be used.
As mentioned above, administrators for the user ad-preference server 254 can analyze the Table 220 to gain insight into what ads offends or irritate users. Data in
When the web site receives the user's request to open a new web page, the web site prepares a web page with content and ads. At operation 303, an ad is displayed in the new web page that is opened for the user based on the user's request. In one embodiment, the ad needs to be clicked by the user to open by the landing page of the ad. In another embodiment, the ad is displayed in the web page and does not require the user to take any action. In the case that the user needs to open the ad, the user send an input (or a signal) to the system, such as by clicking on the ad, to indicate that the user wants to see contents of the ad at optional operation 304. Once the user clicks on the ad, a landing page of the ad is displayed to the user.
After the user views the ad, in one embodiment, the user feels a strong dislike for the ad displayed to him/her. As described above, the user presses a button, such as the “Hate this Ad!” button 150 on the web page. When the user presses the button, the system of the web site receives an input indicating the user's strong dislike of the ad from the user at operation 305. When the system receives such an input, the system removes the ad strongly disliked by the user at operation 307. The ad can be removed by closing the window with the landing page of operation 304 and/or can be closed by removing the ad displayed in the new web page requested by the user, which includes the ad. Alternatively, a new ad can be used to replace the ad strongly disliked by the user.
After the user views the web page, the user selects or enters his/her reason(s) at operation 329. In one embodiment, the process flow 320 stops at operation 329. In another embodiment, process flow 320 continues to the next operation. When the process flow 320 continues at next operation 331, the system displays a web page with a few test ads for the users to indicate how much the user like or dislike these few test ads. Other alternatives of indicating the user's preference or opinions of the few ads have been described in the description of
The present invention fills the need of avoiding displaying advertisements that are strongly disliked by the users. Displaying advertisements that are strongly disliked (or offend) users, web sites stand the chance of driving users away or losing users. By allowing users to identify advertisements that offend or annoy (or strongly disliked by) them, web sites can configure the systems so that offensive or annoying advertisements are not displayed to the offended or annoyed users. In addition, when a user is seriously turned off by an advertisement to indicate his/her strong dislike for the advertisement (ad), the user is likely to disclose the reason why he/she does not like the ad, and could be willing to provide further information on what types of ads that are liked or disliked by the user. Web sites can collect the inputs on their preference of advertisements of users to target future ads. Knowing users' (or customers') preference in ads allow web sites to more successfully select ads to display to users to keep users happy and keep coming back. Knowing users' strong dislikes of ads can also allow web sites to not send the ads strongly disliked by users to them and avoids angering or driving away users. Alternatively, the methods and systems described above can be used to collect inputs users regarding ads that they like.
With the above embodiments in mind, it should be understood that the invention might employ various computer-implemented operations involving data stored in computer systems. These operations are those requiring physical manipulation of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. Further, the manipulations performed are often referred to in terms, such as producing, identifying, determining, or comparing.
The invention can also be embodied as computer readable code on a computer readable medium. The computer readable medium is any data storage device that can store data, which can be thereafter read by a computer system. The computer readable medium may also include an electromagnetic carrier wave in which the computer code is embodied. Examples of the computer readable medium include hard drives, network attached storage (NAS), read-only memory, random-access memory, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, magnetic tapes, and other optical and non-optical data storage devices. The computer readable medium can also be distributed over a network coupled computer system so that the computer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.
Any of the operations described herein that form part of the invention are useful machine operations. The invention also relates to a device or an apparatus for performing these operations. The apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, or it may be a general-purpose computer selectively activated or configured by a computer program stored in the computer. In particular, various general-purpose machines may be used with computer programs written in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may be more convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the required operations.
The above-described invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations including hand-held devices, microprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers and the like. Although the foregoing invention has been described in some detail for purposes of clarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes and modifications may be practiced within the scope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the present embodiments are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims. In the claims, elements and/or steps do not imply any particular order of operation, unless explicitly stated in the claims.
