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.
Claims20
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 on a client device, the agent, the merchant and the search engine being all separate and distinct, and remotely disposed from each other and from the client device, the detecting including
- receiving a connection request by the trusted agent to connect a user to the merchant from the search engine, wherein the connection request resulted from the click on the advertisement associated with the merchant;
- 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 on a client device, the apparatus, the merchant and the search engine being all separate and distinct and remotely disposed from each other and from the client device,
- determine that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was completed, the determining including
- receiving a transaction request from the merchant to process a transaction between the merchant and a user,
- processing the request to complete the transaction, and
- if the transaction was completed, notifying the merchant of the completion of the transaction,
- 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 stored on the storage medium and configured to program an apparatus, trusted by a merchant and a search engine, to
- detect a click on an advertisement displayed by the search engine on a client device, the apparatus, the merchant, the search engine being separate and distinct, and being remotely disposed from each other and from the client device,
- determine that a transaction of the merchant associated with the displayed advertisement was complete,
- determine if the completed transaction was resulted from the click,
- 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, and
- provide the merchant with one or more keyword effectiveness metrics for one or more keywords submitted to the trusted agent by the merchant.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.