Hierarchical models of consumer attributes for targeting content in a privacy-preserving manner

A method of selecting content for presentation to a consumer, comprising:

• storing a consumer model of the consumer including an attribute vector having a plurality of attributes of the consumer;
• receiving a document associated with a plurality of selectable content alternatives, each selectable content alternative associated with a target vector representing expected attributes of a consumer;
• receiving in association with each target vector a relevancy vector including a plurality of relevancy values, each relevancy value associated with at least one attribute of the target vector, the relevancy value indicating a measure of relevancy of the associated attribute of the target vector;
• scaling the attributes of the target vector by the relevancy value associated with each attribute;
• comparing the attribute vector of the consumer with at least one of the scaled target vectors to determine a distance measure between the target vectors and the attribute vector;
• selecting at least one of the content alternatives as a function of the distance measure;
• and
• presenting the selected at least one content alternative to the consumer.

A method of updating a model of consumer attributes, comprising:

• retrieving a plurality of transactions;
• determining a measure of relevancy of each transaction to at least one attribute of a consumer responsive to a conditional probability of each transaction occurring given a value of the attribute;
• and
• updating the at least one attribute as a function of the relevancy of each of the plurality of transactions.

A method of selecting content for presentation to a consumer, the consumer associated with a consumer model describing attributes of the consumer, the content delivered electronically to a consumer computer, the consumer computer including a display device, the consumer associated with a consumer profile including a plurality of attributes of the consumer including at least one aggregated attributed having a value computed from a plurality of other attributes, the method comprising:

• receiving a structured document at the consumer computer, the structured document including a variable content section having a first set of content alternatives;
• selecting a first content alternative for augmenting the section by evaluating attributes of the content alternatives as a function of corresponding attributes of the consumer profile of the consumer and ordering the first set of content alternatives into an order including the first content alternative;
• presenting the structured document with the first content alternative on the display device;
• receiving a consumer action indicating selection of the first content alternative;
• sending in response to the consumer action a second set of variable content alternatives, including a content alternative having an attribute that contributes to an aggregate attribute of the first content alternative;
• selecting a second content alternative by evaluating the attributes of second set of content alternatives as a function of corresponding attributes of the consumer profile of the consumer and ordering the second set of content alternatives into an order including the second content alternative;
• and
• presenting the structured document with the second content alternative on the display device.

A method of customizing a structured document, the structured document including a plurality of variable content sections, each variable content section having a plurality of selectable content alternatives, the structured document electronically delivered to a consumer computer, the consumer computer including a display device, the method comprising:

• for each variable content section, selecting a subset of the content alternatives for augmenting the section by evaluating the content alternatives with respect to a consumer profile of the consumer, ordering the subset of content alternatives into an order including a first content alternative, and augmenting the section with the first content alternative;
• presenting the augmented structured document to the consumer on the display device with the first content alternative for each variable content section;
• and
• enabling presentment to the consumer on the display device of the remaining content alternatives for each variable content section.