Targeting content for users of external websites

Abstract

A content providing entity controls use of a cookie that is placed on individual computers that download a resource from a publisher site, hosted at publisher domain. The individual computers can be programmatically triggered to directly transmit cookie data, collected through placement of the cookie on the respective computer, to a network location that resides with a domain of the content providing entity. The content providing entity can select, using the cookie data, a subset group of the visitors to receive content items selected from an inventory database of the content providing entity. The content providing entity transmits the selected content items to the computers of the subset group using the cookie stored with each of the visitor computers.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.