10 replies to this topic

[bragadocchio]

A couple of days ago, I promised to publish links to some places to use to research Google paid search.

There are some excellent places to keep track of changes like JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising and the FAQs, tours, demos, and tutorials at: http://www.google.com/ads/


Google patent applications:

Following are a number of the patent applications involving advertisements and paid search from Google that have been published at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Keep in mind that these are just patent applications, and have not been granted. It's possible that some may be in use by Google, some may never be used by Google, and some were just exploration of ideas that weren't pursued.



Filed 06/30/04 Published 01/05/06

Adjusting ad costs using document performance or document collection performance

Abstract

Documents or document sets may be scored to reflect a value of an action, such as a selection for example, when an ad is served with the document (or a document belonging to a document set). A cost associated with the action with respect to an ad that was served with a document may then be adjusted using the score. For example, ad scores may be accepted or determined, and a document may be scored using the ad scores when served with the document and ad scores across a collection of documents to generate a document score. Each of the ad scores may indicate a value of an action with respect to an ad, such as a conversion rate, or a return on investment for an ad selection for example. Document scores used in this way may help advertisers get a more consistent cost per conversion, or return on investment, without requiring them to enter and manage various offers for various documents and/or various ad serving systems having various conversion rates or returns on investment.

Filed 06/30/04 Published 01/05/06

Advertisements for devices with call functionality, such as mobile phones

Abstract

The serving of one or more ads to a user device considers determined characteristics of a user device, such as whether or not the user device supports telephone calls. At least some ads may include call-on-select functionality. When such an ad is selected (e.g., via a button click), instead of loading a document (e.g., Web page) for rendering, a telephone number associated with the ad by an advertiser can be automatically dialed.

Filed 05/10/04 Published 11/10/05

Facilitating the serving of ads having different treatments and/or characteristics, such as text ads and image ads

Abstract

The serving of ads of different ad types, such as text ads and image ads, competing to be rendered on an ad area of a document may be arbitrated by (a) determining candidate ads to serve in response to an ad request, wherein the candidate ads include at least one ad of a first ad type and at least one ad of a second ad type, (b) determining a score of each of at least some of the candidate ads, © comparing alternative sets of the at least some of the candidate ads to select a set that best meets at least one policy goal, and (d) serving the selected set of candidate ads. Performance parameter values of ads of one type, such as image ads for example, may be estimated from performance parameter values of ads of a second type, such as text ads for example.

Filed 05/10/04 Published 11/10/05

Automated graphical advertisement size compatibility and link insertion

Abstract

A system for and method of forming graphical advertisements is presented. The disclosed techniques ensure that the graphical advertisements are compatible with available space and industry-standard sizing. The techniques further allow for insertion of a link into the graphical advertisement, where the link is configured such that an activating user will not receive unwanted material.

Filed 03/30/04 Published 10/06/05

System and method for rating electronic documents

Abstract

A system and method for rating an electronic document such as an advertisement. Rating information is received from one or more evaluators. A signal relevant to a criteria is received and a determination is made whether to deliver the document in response to the signal based on the criteria and the rating information from the one or more evaluators.

Filed 06/24/04 Published 10/06/05

Results based personalization of advertisements in a search engine

Abstract

Personalized advertisements are provided to a user using a search engine to obtain documents relevant to a search query. The advertisements are personalized in response to a search profile that is derived from personalized search results. The search results are personalized based on a user profile of the user providing the query. The user profile describes interests of the user, and can be derived from a variety of sources, including prior search queries, prior search results, expressed interests, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and activity information.

Filed 03/31/04 Published 10/06/05

Rendering content-targeted ads with e-mail

Abstract

An asynchronous and opportunistically available scheme under which a user's e-mail (or a document including e-mail content) is rendered immediately, and later updated with appropriate advertisements if and when they became available, is described. This scheme ensures that the availability of advertisements will not adversely affect the rendering of the e-mail content. For example, a Web-based e-mail server may facilitate the serving of advertisements with e-mail by (a) accepting a request for a document including e-mail, (b) generating a request identifier, © serving the requested document in association with the request identifier, and (d) obtaining at least one ad relevant to content of the e-mail. The Web-based e-mail server may further (e) store the obtained ad(s), (f) accept an ad request, (g) read the stored ad(s) using information from the ad request, and (h) serve the ad(s).

Filed 03/30/04 Published 10/06/05

Selectively delivering advertisements based at least in part on trademark issues

Abstract

A system and method for selectively delivering legal information communications for documents (e.g., advertisements). An input is received, wherein the input is a document delivery-triggering event operative to cause a document to be delivered to a user. A location associated with the input is identified. Based at least in part on the location, it is determined whether to provide a legal information communication. A document is delivered based at least in part on the input, wherein the document is delivered with a legal information communication if the location is determined to be in a legal information communication jurisdiction.

Filed 03/24/04 Published 09/29/05

System and method for providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising

Abstract

A system and method for providing on-line advertising is presented. An interface guiding on-line advertising creation is presented. An advertisement is created from at least one of user inputs and stored data and includes information describing at least one item. An advertising creative is generated in association with the advertisement and includes a hyperlink reference to the advertisement. The advertisement is hosted on-line as a Web page and the advertising creative is placed on one or more targeted Web pages.

Filed 12/23/03 Published 06/30/05

Method and system for providing targeted graphical advertisements

Abstract

A system and a method are directed to targeted graphical advertisements, which may involve identifying a graphical advertisement associated with an entity (e.g., advertiser); associating one or more concepts with the graphical advertisement; receiving a request for an advertisement associated with a concept; and delivering the graphical advertisement associated with the concept, wherein the graphical advertisement is positioned for display based on a ranking among advertisements for the concept, the ranking being based at least on a price parameter amount offered by the entity.

[bragadocchio]

And some more...

Filed 12/31/03 published 06/16/05

Generating user information for use in targeted advertising

Abstract

User profile information for a user may be determined by (a) determining initial user profile information for the user, (b) inferring user profile information for the user, and © determining the user profile information for the user using both the initial user profile information and the inferred user profile information. Initial user profile information for the user may be determined using past search queries submitted by the user, and/or past document selections by the user. User profile information for the user may be inferred by (a) defining a node for each of a number of documents and the user, (b) adding edges between nodes if there is an association between the nodes to define a graph, and © inferring user profile information for the user using a topology of the graph and user profile information of other documents. Similarly, user profile information for a document may be determined by (a) determining initial user profile information for the document, (b) inferring user profile information for the document, and © determining the user profile information for the document using both the initial user profile information and the inferred user profile information. The initial user profile information for the document may be determined using content information from the document, and/or document meta information. User profile information for the document may be inferred by (a) defining a node for each of a number of documents and for each of a number of users, (b) adding edges between nodes if there is an association between the nodes to define a graph, and © inferring user profile information for the document using a topology of the graph and user profile information of users and of other documents. Document, user, and/or ad user profile information may be used when serving ads.

Filed 12/11/03 published 06/16/05

Systems and methods detecting for providing advertisements in a communications network

Abstract

A system provides advertising links. The system may received a query and provide a number of advertising links in response to the query. The number of advertising links may be dynamically adjusted based at least in part on the commercial-ness of the query. The display format of the advertising links may also be altered based at least in part on the commercialness of the query.

Filed 12/31/03 published 05/05/05

System and method for enabling an advertisement to follow the user to additional web pages

Abstract

A computer-implemented method and system for advertising that performs the steps of delivering an electronic advertisement comprising one or more menu options and a reference to a network location for retrieving specified content associated with each menu option for inclusion in a first electronic document, receiving a selection of one or more menu options from the electronic advertisement and delivering a subsequent accessible document including content from the referenced network location associated with the menu option selected, the subsequent accessible document including the electronic advertisement.

Filed 09/30/03 published 03/31/05

System and method for automatically targeting web-based advertisements

Abstract

A system and method for automatically targeting Web-based advertisements is described. Advertisements are identified relative to a query, wherein identified advertisements describe characteristics relative to at least one of a product and a service. The advertisements are scored according to match between the query and the characteristics of the identified advertisements. At least some of the advertisements are provided as Web-based content.

Filed 09/29/03 published 03/24/05

Generating information for online advertisements from Internet data and traditional media data

Abstract

Online information (such as advertiser Web pages in conjunction with products lists, Web content, existing online ads, etc.), or an electronic version of offline advertisement information, is used to generate online advertising information, such as a landing page, targeting information, and/or ad creative information.

Filed 06/30/03 published 12/30/04

Promoting and/or demoting an advertisement from an advertising spot of one type to an advertising spot of another type
Abstract

Ads may be promoted to a more preferred ad spot type and/or demoted to a less preferred ad spot type in a manner that maximizes or increases their economic values and/or their utility to their audience. Such promoting and/or demoting may be done based on accepted ad monetary amount information and/or ad performance information.

Filed 06/30/03 published 12/30/04

Serving advertisements using a search of advertiser Web information

Abstract

Advertisers are permitted to put targeted ads on, or to serve ads in association with, various content such as search results pages, Web pages, e-mail, etc., without requiring the advertiser to enter and/or maintain certain targeting information, such as keyword targeting. This may be accomplished by using a searchable data structure, such as an inverted index for example, of available advertiser Web information. The advertiser Web information may include terms and/or phrase extracted from the advertiser's Website. In particular, a search query may be used to search for matching advertisers, and therefore matching ads. For example, the search query can be used to search an inverted index including words and/or phrases extracted from advertiser Websites. The advertiser Web page, or some other identifier, can be used as a key to search for an associated ad.

[bragadocchio]

And a few others...

Filed 06/30/03 published 12/30/04

Rendering advertisements with documents having one or more topics using user topic interest information

Abstract

Ambiguities with respect to a user topic interest may be resolved so that useful topic-relevant ads can be presented. Such ambiguities may be resolved by monitoring user behavior, determining a user topic interest (e.g., from a plurality of different candidate topics) based on the monitored behavior, and serving ads relevant to the determined user topic interest.

Filed 06/30/03 published 12/30/04

Using enhanced ad features to increase competition in online advertising

Abstract

In an online advertising system, advertisers compete with each other for advertising space. There may be multiple advertising positions available, where the placement of advertisements is determined by an auction. To encourage competition, some advertisements may be presented with enhanced features. These enhanced features create an incentive for which advertisers can compete, thereby increasing the effectiveness, usefulness and/or profitability of the advertising system. The application of enhanced features may be determined using at least one or more of pricing information, performance information and advertising information.

Filed 08/25/03 published 12/09/04

Method and system for dynamic textual ad distribution via email

Abstract

A system and method for providing dynamic pay-for-placement advertisements via graphics-enabled email that generates a display of advertisements when the email newsletter is opened so the advertisements displayed are based on rankings at the time the email is opened instead of when the email was generated and transmitted. In one embodiment, a graphical-content email having one or more embedded advertisement image references is provided to one or more email recipients. The advertisement image reference, in one embodiment, may include query string parameters indicating the context of the image reference and/or portion of the image reference (i.e., identifying the image reference as being part of a particular newsletter email), a position of the image reference in the email display, and the like. A URL reference also may be included with each advertisement image reference (.e.g., one URL for each advertisement portion of the image to be retrieved by the advertising image reference).

Filed 08/05/03 published 08/26/04

Serving content-relevant advertisements with client-side device support

Abstract

A client-side application (such as a browser, a browser plug-in, a browser toolbar plug-in, etc. on an end user's computer) is used to support the serving of content-relevant ads to the client device. The client-side application may provide such support by sending document information (such as a document identifier, document content, content relevance information, etc.) to a content ad server. The client-side application may also be used to combine content of the document and the content-relevant ads. For example, the client-side application may combine content of the document and the ads in a window (e.g., in a browser window), may provide the ads in a window above, below, adjacent to a document window, may provide the ads in "chrome" of the browser, etc.

Filed 02/26/03 published 05/13/04

Serving advertisements based on content

Abstract

Advertisers are permitted to put targeted ads on page on the web (or some other document of any media type). The present invention may do so by (i) obtaining content that includes available spots for ads, (ii) determining ads relevant to content, and/or (iii) combining content with ads determined to be relevant to the content.

Filed 12/06/02 published 03/25/04

Methods and apparatus for serving relevant advertisements

Abstract

The relevance of advertisements to a user's interests is improved. In one implementation, the content of a web page is analyzed to determine a list of one or more topics associated with that web page. An advertisement is considered to be relevant to that web page if it is associated with keywords belonging to the list of one or more topics. One or more of these relevant advertisements may be provided for rendering in conjunction with the web page or related web pages.

Filed 03/05/03 published 03/04/04

Method and system for providing advertising listing variance in distribution feeds over the internet to maximize revenue to the advertising distributor

Abstract

An Internet advertisement listings provider that distributes advertisements in a bid-for-placement arrangement based on the revenue-efficiency of the advertisements from the bidding advertisers that calculates the revenue to the advertising distribution system by multiplying the click-through rate times the bid amount for each click-through. Advertisers may be allowed to provide multiple advertisements to enable the advertisement listings provider to select from those various advertisements for inclusion in ranked listings based on a determined efficiency among the advertisements. The system also determines the most efficient grouping of advertisements for a limited-space output, comparing groupings of advertisements to other groups to determine the greater revenue to the distribution system.

Filed 03/14/03 published 01/29/04

Method and system for providing filtered and/or masked advertisements over the internet

Abstract

Methods and systems that allow an Internet distribution partner of an advertisement listings provider to receive filtered and masked listings for display on the website of the Internet distribution partner. The Internet distribution partner defines filters to be applied to ranked advertising listings provided by an advertising listing provider. The advertisement listings provider system applies the filter to the listings in its database and identify matches and/or excludes matches depending on the characteristic specified. The advertisement listings provider may then send the Internet distribution partner advertisement listings based on the application of one or more filter selected by the distribution partner. Thus, the advertisement listings provider and the Internet distribution partner are able to generate additional revenue without risking the Internet distribution partner's valuable relationships with its exclusive advertisers and without jeopardizing the Internet advertising distribution partner's relationships with its end users.

Filed 12/04/02 published 01/22/04

Method and system for providing advertising through content specific nodes over the internet

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing advertising content over the Internet through a hierarchical content-specific node structure and pricing advertising delivery over each node independently. Independent delivery and pricing allows an advertiser to pay more for advertisements delivered to a narrowly targeted audience likely to be interested in the goods or services offered by the advertising entity and to pay less for advertisements directed at a more general audience who may or may not have an interest in the goods or services offered. The less content specific the node is, the less targeted the advertisement will be, and therefore, the less valuable the advertisement will be to the advertising entity. Targeted advertising to multiple levels of content specific nodes is enabled.

[randfish]

Hot damn, Bill - you've been busy. Any chance you'll pull out the important concepts in a blog post?

[bragadocchio]

There's probably enough material for a few blog posts, Rand.

[torka]

A few blog posts?? Sheesh. There's probably enough there for a book... a big ol' heavy book...

--Torka

[JohnMu]

Thanks, Bill!! Now I know what I'll be doing on the weekend ... (reading reading reading)

Cheers
John

[SEO-Bru]

Bill:

I saw where Google was just awarded a patent for "targeted advertising". They list 24 prior patents related to advertising on the Internet. http://tinyurl.com/yk4lqw

Do you happen to know if any of these Patent authors including Google ever exercise their rights to enforce their patents? It almost seems as if companies get the patents just to CYA in case a competitor gets there later and blocks all the work they've done in that field.

Intel is listed as one of the earliest Internet advertising patents. Have they ever gone after Google?
http://tinyurl.com/yas9j5

[bragadocchio]

Hi SEO-Bru,

The one patent that was granted yesterday looks interesting, and I haven't had a chance to dig into in too deeply. I'd like to actually click through all of those patents and patent applications it cites as references (either by the patent filers are the patent examiner), and learn a little more about them. Chances are good that most aren't from Google.

A lot of companies don't like to litigate in public, and it's possible in some instances that technology that belongs to one company may have been licensed out to another already.

Cease and desist letters don't get filed in court if there is no pending case before a court, so it's difficult to tell what types of interactions that owners of patented property may have. Google and Yahoo did have some lititgation between them over patents that Yahoo was assigned.

Also, just because a patent is referred to in a patent filing, doesn't mean that it the technology behind it was used - a patent examiner may possibly not grant a patent if that was the case.

The Intel patent looks interesting. I'm not aware of any litigation between Google and Intel. Worth doing a little research upon.

Thanks.

[SEO-Bru]

Thanks Bill for the quick reply.

I'm just wondering what Tacoda will do with their Behavioral Targeting business now that Google has a patent on targeted advertising.

I really am amazed at what the patent office grants. There must be countless websites prior to 2003 with classified advertising listed in targeted categories that predate Google's patent.

They'd have content like, " the following advertising relates to RV vehicles" and then a list of the targeted ads.

[bragadocchio]

You're welcome.

Reading about what Tacoda is attempting to do, I can see differences that are significant enough that I don't think the company will be impacted by the granting of Google's patent.

Google's patent attempts to place ads on pages that are relevant to the content of those pages.

Tacoda attempts to place ads on pages that are relevant to the demographic that their advertisers are attempting to reach - that is, if their business model is still the same as described in this ClickZ article:

Tacoda Forms Behavioral Ad Network, Challenges Paid Search Players

Looks like it is from a visit to their web site.