Systems and methods for advertising using pay-per-call
AssigneeQwest Communications International Inc.
InventorJohn Verbil
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods and systems are disclosed for providing online advertisements to consumers. A method disclosed herein allows a consumer to provide contact information to a business in response to a search request submitted to a search engine. Subsequently, the business may initiate a communication to the consumer at the contact information provided by the consumer. As a result, the business has better assurance that the advertisement fees provided to the search engine is in fact generating better consumer contacts for the business. In an embodiment of the system disclosed herein a telecommunications service provider may receive the contact information from the consumer and establish a line of communication between the consumer and the business.
Claims30
A method of connecting a consumer with a business, the method comprising:
- providing, by a telecommunications service provider, an online advertisement of the business on a website being viewed by the consumer;
- receiving, by the telecommunications service provider, an indication of interest from the consumer about the online advertisement;
- in response to the indication of interest, presenting, to the telecommunications service provider, an input option to the consumer for contacting the business;
- receiving, by the telecommunications service provider, contact information from the consumer via the input option;
- initiating, by the telecommunications service provider, a line of communication between the business and the consumer using the contact information;
- and
- charging, by the telecommunications service provider, a fee to the business for initiating the line of communication.
A method of connecting a business to a consumer, the method comprising:
- receiving, by a telecommunications service provider, an advertisement from the business;
- combining, by the telecommunications service provider, at least part of the advertisement with a webpage to generate a first document;
- presenting, by the telecommunications service provider, the first document to the consumer;
- receiving, by the telecommunications service provider, a selection signal from the consumer selecting the at least part of the advertisement;
- in response to the selection signal, generating, by the telecommunications service provider, a second document to the consumer, the second document including an input window to receive consumer contact information;
- receiving, by the telecommunications service provider, the consumer contact information;
- and
- establishing, by the telecommunications service provider, a line of communication originating from the business to the consumer using the consumer contact information.
A system of connecting a business to a consumer, the system comprising:
- a network;
- a search engine system in communication with the network, wherein the search engine system is configured to:
- receive a search request from a consumer computing device,
- generate a search result document in response to the search request, wherein the search result document includes a request for consumer contact information,
- transmit the search result document to the consumer computing device, and
- receive the consumer contact information from the consumer computing device;
- and
- an automated call generation system in communication with the network, wherein the automated call generation system is configured to:
- receive the consumer contact information from the search engine system, and
- generate a line of communication from a communications equipment located at the business to the consumer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.