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US 2007/0192194 A1Published application
Metalevel electronic marketplace for advertising
OwnerMichael O'Donnell, Jonathan Petersoninventors
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method using an intermediary electronic marketplace for sourcing advertisements from multiple advertisement suppliers that use an electronic marketplace to acquire, select, and place electronic advertisements and providing the advertisements to publishers. By operating as an intermediary, the method can automatically compare prices of advertisements from multiple sources, allowing effective price competition, and the method can provide a third party check to verify that proper payment is made to each publisher.
Claims35
A method for use in a computer system to effect an intermediary electronic marketplace for a plurality of electronic marketplace advertisement sources, the method comprising:
- (a) receiving automatically offered feeds from each of a plurality of first level electronic marketplaces for advertisements where each first level electronic marketplace received sets of data via a computer network from a plurality of electronic advertising sources, each set of data comprising a pointer to content of an offered advertisement and metadata about the advertisement which metadata may be used to determine ad placement, selected advertisements to be offered, and automatically offered the advertisements to others via a computer network;
- (b) with the automatically offered feeds from each of the first level electronic marketplaces for advertisements, bidding offers from at least two electronic marketplaces against each other by:
- (c) receiving requests for ad placements via a computer network from a plurality of publisher computer systems that publish content to people via a computer network, each request comprising information from which a selection of an appropriate advertisement may be made;
- (d) using metadata about offered advertisements from at least two first level electronic marketplaces and the information about each request to automatically match an advertisement to each request and
- (e) transmitting to each publisher computer system a pointer to content of one of the offered advertisements in response to each request for ad placement.
2 more elements
A method for use in a computer system to effect a merging of multiple electronic advertisement sources, the method comprising:
- (a) receiving sets of data via a computer network from a first electronic advertising source according to a first standard advertising data interchange protocol, each set of data comprising a pointer to content of an offered advertisement and metadata about the advertisement which metadata may be used to determine ad placement;
- (b) receiving sets of data via a computer network from a second electronic advertising source according to a second standard advertising data interchange protocol, each set of data comprising a pointer to content of an offered advertisement and metadata about the advertisement which metadata may be used to determine ad placement;
- (c) where the first protocol is inconsistent with the second protocol and the second protocol is inconsistent with the first protocol;
- (d) translating the sets of data received via the first and second protocols into a single common advertisement data format
- (e) receiving requests for ad placements via a computer network from a plurality of publisher computer systems that publish content to people via a computer network, each request comprising information from which a selection of an appropriate advertisement may be made;
- (c) using the metadata about each offered advertisement and the information about each request to automatically match an advertisement to each request and
- (d) transmitting to each publisher computer system a pointer to content of an advertisement in response to each request for ad placement.
4 more elements
A method for use in a computer system to automatically compare prices of offered ads from multiple electronic advertisement sources, the method comprising:
- (a) receiving sets of data via a computer network from a first electronic advertising source, each set of data comprising a pointer to content of an offered advertisement and metadata about the advertisement which metadata may be used to determine advertisement placement where the metadata includes a price offered to be paid to a publisher for at least one of:
- presenting the advertisement, receiving a click from the advertisement, or receiving a telephone call to a telephone number shown in the advertisement;
- (b) receiving sets of data via a computer network from a second electronic advertising source, each set of data comprising a pointer to content of an offered advertisement and metadata about the advertisement which metadata may be used to determine advertisement placement where the metadata includes a price offered to be paid to a publisher for at least one of:
- presenting the advertisement, receiving a click from the advertisement, or receiving a telephone call to a telephone number shown in the advertisement;
- (c) receiving requests for ad placements, each request comprising information from which a selection of an appropriate advertisement may be made;
- (e) using the metadata about each offered advertisement and the information about each request to automatically match an advertisement to each request;
- and
- (f) in the matching process, considering offered prices.
5 more elements
A method for tracking and reporting to publishers performance of electronic advertising networks, comprising:
- (a) on an intermediary server, receiving a request for ad placement via a computer network from a publisher computer system that publishes content to people via a computer network, the request comprising information from which a selection of an appropriate advertisement may be made;
- (b) forwarding the request to a server of an electronic advertising network where the advertising network server (1) receives via a computer network from a plurality of electronic advertisers pointers to content of offered advertisements and metadata about the advertisements which metadata may be used to determine ad placement, (2) selects an advertisement from an advertiser based on information received from the intermediary server, and (3) automatically provides a pointer to content of the selected advertisement to the intermediary server;
- (c) transmitting to the publisher computer system the pointer to content of the offered advertisement along with a response pointer to a tracking and reporting server which pointer is activated if a viewer of the advertisement takes an action with respect to the advertisement;
- (d) on the tracking and reporting server, receiving a data set via the response pointer which data set indicates that a viewer clicked on the advertisement;
- (e) forwarding information from the data set back to the electronic marketplace server;
- (f) making a record of information from the data set;
- and
- (g) reporting information from the data set to the publisher.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.