Click fraud prevention
AssigneeEfficient Frontier
InventorZachary Mason
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods, apparatuses, and articles of manufacture for detecting, by an agent trusted by a merchant and a search engine, a click on an advertisement displayed by the search engine, are described herein. The trusted agent may further determine that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was completed and determine whether the completed transaction was resulted from the click. In some embodiments, the trusted agent may notify the merchant and the search engine of a billing event associated with the click, if the completed transaction was determined to be resulted from the click.
Claims23
A method comprising:
- detecting, by an agent trusted by a merchant and a search engine, a click on an advertisement displayed by the search engine;
- determining, by the trusted agent, that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was completed;
- determining, by the trusted agent, if the completed transaction was resulted from the click;
- and
- notifying, by the trusted agent, the merchant and the search engine of a billing event associated with the click, if the completed transaction was determined to be resulted from the click.
An apparatus comprising:
- a processor;
- and
- an agent, trusted by a merchant and a search engine, operated by the processor and adapted to
- detect a click on an advertisement displayed by the search engine,
- determine that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was completed,
- determine if the completed transaction was resulted from the click, and
- notify the merchant and the search engine of a billing event associated with the click, if the completed transaction was determined to be resulted from the click.
An article of manufacture comprising:
- a storage medium;
- and
- a plurality of programming instructions designed to program an apparatus and enable the apparatus to
- detect, by the apparatus, trusted by a merchant and a search engine, a click on an advertisement displayed by the search engine;
- determine, by the trusted apparatus, that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was completed;
- determine, by the trusted apparatus, if the completed transaction was resulted from the click;
- and
- notify, by the trusted apparatus, the merchant and the search engine of a billing event associated with the click, if the completed transaction was determined to be resulted from the click.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.