Generating and presenting targeted advertisements including representations of subject individuals

A computer program product for selecting and presenting an advertisement to a user, comprising:

• a computer-readable storage medium;
• and
• computer program code, encoded on the computer-readable storage medium, for causing an electronic device to perform the steps of:
• receiving, via an interaction receiving engine, and recording, at a server, one or more indications of advertisement interactions, the one or more indications of advertisement interactions being received input at a client device associated with a user and indicative of activity between the client device and an advertisement displayed on the client device, the one or more indications of advertisement interactions comprising one or more of mouse-over events, click events, and post-click activity including providing information to a form, and causing an application to be installed;
• receiving and storing, at an interaction database, metadata corresponding to one or more indications of social network interactions occurring between the client device associated with the user and at least one interacting subject individual using an Internet-based social network, wherein the metadata corresponding to each of the one or more indications of social network interactions is stored in a uniform format so as to enable comparison of the one or more indications of social network interactions to which the metadata corresponds;
• receiving, at the server from the client device associated with the user, a request for the advertisement to be presented to the user;
• for each of a plurality of candidate advertisements, determining, by the server, (i) at least one friend rank comprising a metric associated with the at least one interacting subject individual with whom the user has interacted using the Internet-based social network, wherein the at least one friend rank is determined at least in part by the received and stored metadata and (ii) at least one contributor rank indicating a degree of authoritativeness of a contributing subject individual with respect to subject matter of the advertisement, the at least one contributor rank not being based on social network interactions between the contributing subject individual and the user;
• for each of the plurality of candidate advertisements, aggregating the at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank, and
• generating a score for each of the plurality of candidate advertisements based at least in part on the aggregated at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank, with the score differing from the at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank;
• identifying a selected advertisement from the plurality of candidate advertisements based at least in part on the generated scores;
• comparing at least one normalized contributor rank for the selected advertisement to at least one normalized friend rank for the selected advertisement;
• selecting, based on the comparing, a represented subject individual associated with a normalized contributor rank for the selected advertisement that is greater than all of the at least one normalized friend rank for the selected advertisement, the represented subject individual having contributed input with respect to the subject matter of the advertisement and having at least one recorded indication of an interaction with the selected advertisement;
• determining a location and a type of a placeholder in the selected advertisement;
• obtaining, from a storage database by the server, a representation of the represented subject individual having a representation type that matches the type of the placeholder;
• configuring, by the server, the selected advertisement to include the representation of the represented subject individual, obtained from the storage database, inserted at the determined location of the placeholder in the selected advertisement, wherein the representation includes an indication of an interaction between the represented subject individual and the advertisement through a web browser;
• electronically transmitting visible indicia of the selected advertisement to a user interface of a display of the client device associated with the user, wherein, in response to receiving the selected advertisement, the client device associated with the user is configured to display, via the display of the client device associated with the user, the selected advertisement that comprises the representation of the represented subject individual and enables user interaction by the user, via the user interface, with the visible indicia associated with the selected advertisement;
• and
• detecting, via the user interface, and storing an interaction of the user with the visible indicia of the selected advertisement that comprises the representation of the represented subject individual.

A system for selecting and presenting an advertisement to a user, comprising:

• an interaction receiving engine to receive one or more indications of advertisement interactions;
• a database to record the one or more indications of advertisement interactions, indications of advertisement interactions being received input at a client device associated with a user indicative of activity between the client device associated with the user and an advertisement displayed on the client device associated with the user, the indications of advertisement interactions comprising one or more of mouse-over events, click events, and post-click activity including providing information to a form, and causing an application to be installed;
• an interaction database to receive and record metadata corresponding to one or more indications of social network interactions occurring between the client device associated with the user and at least one interacting subject individual using an Internet-based social network, wherein the metadata corresponding to each of the one or more indications of social network interactions is stored in a uniform format so as to enable comparison of the one or more indications of social network interactions to which the metadata corresponds;
• a server, to receive, from the client device associated with the user, a request for the advertisement to be presented to the user;
• an advertisement rank computation and selection engine to:
• for each of a plurality of candidate advertisements, determine at least one friend rank comprising a metric associated with the at least one interacting subject individual with whom the user has interacted using an Internet-based social network, and at least one contributor rank indicating a degree of authoritativeness of a contributing subject individual with respect to subject matter of the advertisement, the contributor rank not being based on social network interactions between the contributing subject individual and the user;
• for each of the plurality of candidate advertisements,
• aggregate the at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank, and
• generate a score for each of the plurality of candidate advertisements based at least in part on the aggregated at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank, with the score differing from the at least one friend rank and the at least one contributor rank;
• identify a selected advertisement from the plurality of candidate advertisements based at least in part on the generated scores;
• comparing at least one normalized contributor rank for the selected advertisement to at least one normalized friend rank for the selected advertisement;
• select, based on the comparing, a represented subject individual associated with a normalized contributor rank for the selected advertisement that is greater than all of the at least one normalized friend rank for the selected advertisement, the represented subject individual having contributed input with respect to the subject matter of the advertisement and having at least one recorded indication of an interaction with the selected advertisement;
• determine a location and a type of a placeholder in the selected advertisement;
• obtain, from a storage database by the server, a representation of the represented subject individual having a representation type that matches the type of the placeholder;
• configure, by the server, the selected advertisement to include the representation of the represented subject individual, obtained from the storage database, inserted at the determined location of the placeholder in the selected advertisement, wherein the representation includes an indication of a transaction involving the interaction between the represented subject individual and the advertisement through a web browser;
• a transmission device to electronically transmit visible indicia of the selected advertisement to a user interface of a display of the client device associated with the user, wherein, in response to receiving the selected advertisement, the client device associated with the user is configured to display, via the display, the selected advertisement that comprises the representation of the represented subject individual;
• and
• detect, via the user interface, and store an interaction of the user with the selected advertisement that comprises the representation of the represented subject individual.