Methods and apparatuses for geographic area selections in pay-per-call advertisement

• US 20050222908A1
• Filed: 03/30/2005
• Published: 10/06/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 10/06/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thryv, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Original Assignee: UTBK, LLC
• Inventors: Barach, Marc, Somorjai, John, Altberg, Ebbe, Faber, Scott, Hickson, Chris, Fordyce, Michael, Hirson, Ron, Linden, Sean Van der
• Granted Patent: US 8,121,898 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.530
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0259 based on store location
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0267 Wireless devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0273 Determination of fees for advertising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses to connect telephone calls and track information about the telephone calls for geographic area based advertisements. In one embodiment, a method includes: receiving an indication of a target geographic area of an advertisement for an advertiser having a telephone number, the advertisement including one of: a telephone number assigned to the advertiser and a reference to the telephone number assigned to the advertiser; and providing the advertisement for delivery to users of interest in the target geographic area, the advertiser billed for the advertisement based on telephonic connections made to the telephone number of the advertiser through the telephone number assigned to the advertiser.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving an indication of a target geographic area of an advertisement for an advertiser, the advertiser having a telephone number, the advertisement including one of;

a telephone number assigned to the advertiser and a reference to the telephone number assigned to the advertiser; and

providing the advertisement for delivery to users of interest in the target geographic area, the advertiser billed for the advertisement based on telephonic connections made to the telephone number of the advertiser through the telephone number assigned to the advertiser.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication comprises one from a group consisting of:

city;

state;

county;

country; and

, region.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication comprises an indication of area represented by a zip code.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication comprises a distance covering a surrounding area of one from a group consisting of:

a zip code;

a city; and

, a location.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the indication comprises a radius to a business location of the advertiser.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving content for the advertisement from the advertiser, the content including the telephone number of the advertiser; and

replacing the telephone number of the advertiser with one of the telephone number assigned to the advertiser and the reference to the telephone number assigned to the advertiser to generate the advertisement.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the advertisement is provided to a media channel for delivery to users of interest in the target geographic area;

and the telephone number assigned to the advertiser is further associated with the media channel.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the advertisement is provided to a user of interest in the target geographic area through one of:

newspaper;

radio broadcast;

television broadcast;

web server;

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) server; and

Short Message Service (SMS) based server.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a phone call at the telephone number assigned to the advertiser;

determining a geographic area from the phone call;

determining the telephone number of the advertiser based at least partially on matching the geographic area determined from the phone call and the target geographic area of the advertisement; and

connecting the phone call to the telephone number of the advertiser.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the geographic area determined from the phone call is looked up from a database according to the telephone number of the phone call obtained from an Automatic Number Identification (ANI) service.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the geographic area determined from the phone call is based on a cellular positioning system.

12. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

determining a media channel creditable for providing a user the telephone number assigned to the advertiser.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

storing information to indicate a connection made for the phone call to the telephone number of the advertiser, the information including an indication of the media channel.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

debiting an account of the advertiser electronically for the connection made for the phone call to the telephone number of the advertiser.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the telephone number assigned to the advertiser is for the target geographic area.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting the advertisement to a user when the user requests information in the target geographic area.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

transmitting the advertisement to a user device when the user device enters into the target geographic area.

18. A machine-readable medium having stored thereon a set of instructions which when executed perform a method, comprising:

receiving an indication of a target geographic area of an advertisement for an advertiser, the advertiser having a telephone number, the advertisement including one of;

a telephone number assigned to the advertiser and a reference to the telephone number assigned to the advertiser; and

providing the advertisement for delivery to users of interest in the target geographic area, the advertiser billed for the advertisement based on telephonic connections made to the telephone number of the advertiser through the telephone number assigned to the advertiser.

19. A system, comprising:

means for receiving an indication of a target geographic area of an advertisement for an advertiser, the advertiser having a telephone number, the advertisement including one of;

a telephone number assigned to the advertiser and a reference to the telephone number assigned to the advertiser; and

means for providing the advertisement for delivery to users of interest in the target geographic area, the advertiser billed for the advertisement based on telephonic connections made to the telephone number of the advertiser through the telephone number assigned to the advertiser.