Method and system for internet publishing and advertising forums

• US 20060116926A1
• Filed: 11/27/2004
• Published: 06/01/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Michael W. Chen
• Original Assignee: Michael W. Chen
• Inventors: Chen, Michael W.
• Application Number:
  US10/998,784
• Publication Number:
  US 20060116926A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.230
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0222 During e-commerce, i.e. online transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0236 Incentive or reward received by requiring registration or ID from user
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0247 Calculate past, present or future revenues
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0253 During e-commerce, i.e. online transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0273 Determination of fees for advertising

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for conducting online publishing and advertising forums that offers two essential benefits to authors, especially independent authors: 1) providing a centralized Internet repository for authors of all backgrounds, proficiencies, expertise and age groups to publish their knowledge, ideas, work, thoughts and opinions on a wide range of topics and subjects; and 2) rewarding authors with a recurrent royalty drawn from the advertising revenue generated specifically by the articles they published. The collectively diverse and rich content of substance offered by these forums can ultimately boost the visibility and readership of individual articles, a goal difficult to achieve if they were published alone using the limited resources of individual authors. The recurrent nature of the royalty is another unique feature of the present invention such that authors may benefit from their publications financially for an extensively long period.

Claims

1. A method for conducting Internet-based online publishing and advertising forums in which authors are rewarded with a recurrent royalty drawn from the advertising revenue generated specifically by the articles they published comprising:

(a) an author registration process of inputting the contact and billing information of an author and a new unique author identifier into to an author database, and repeating the same for other authors not previously registered;

(b) an article submission process of inputting the full content of an article, a new unique article identifier and the corresponding author identifier into to an article database, and repeating the same for other articles by the same or different registered author;

(c) an advertiser registration process of inputting the contact and billing information of an advertiser and a new unique advertiser identifier into to an advertiser database, and repeating the same for other advertisers not previously registered;

(d) an ad submission process of inputting the content and preference of an ad, a new unique ad identifier and the corresponding advertiser identifier into to an ad database, and repeating the same for other ads from the same or different registered advertiser;

(e) a Web presentation process of displaying the information of and hyper-links to all available articles on an Internet Web site organized based on the subject matters of the articles, thus allowing Internet users to browse through and drill down to different categories and groups of articles and ultimately click on the hyper-link to an article to view its full content;

(f) an article delivery process of, upon the forum Web server receiving an HTTP request sent by the Web browser of an Internet user to access the full content of an available article, delivering a Web version of the article that includes ads inserted based on their corresponding ad preferences;

(g) an accounting process of periodically paying authors whose articles contributed to the ad revenue of that period, and billing the advertisers for ads performed according to their preferences in that period.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the ad content of (d) includes a hyper-link to the Web site or shopping channel of the advertiser.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ad preference of (d) includes a preferred ad format of either display ad or keyword search ad or contextual search ad, and the corresponding ad pricing of either a unit price paid for per ad impression or a unit price paid for per user click on the hyper-link of the ad.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the hyper-link for an ad paid on a per user click basis is removed from the ad content and stored in the ad database in the same data record as the ad content such that it can be later retrieved using the ad identifier.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein (e) the hyper-link to an article includes the article identifier as a hyper-link URL parameter.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein (e) further comprises of providing a search engine function on the Web site to allow Internet users to search among all articles available on the forum for certain keyword(s), and displaying in a list the information of and hyper-links to the articles matching the search criteria.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the hyper-link to an article matching the search criteria includes the article identifier as a hyper-link URL parameter.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein (f) comprises the steps of:

parsing the URL of the HTTP request for the article to extract the article identifier;

using the article identifier to extract the article content from the article database;

inserting the article content into a HTML Web article template with reserved ad spaces;

selecting the appropriate ads to be inserted into the ad spaces based on the corresponding ad preferences;

extracting the ad content, ad pricing and ad identifier of selected ads from the ad database;

for ads paid on a per impression basis, inserting the ad content into the ad space, and recording into an ad activity log the current time and one instance of the ad identifier and article identifier pair;

or

for ads paid on a per user click basis, combining and inserting into the ad space the ad content and a hyper-link pointing back to a record and redirect routine in the forum Web server with the ad identifier and article identifier as the hyper-link URL parameters;

transmitting the completed HTML Web article with inserted ads to the Web browser of the Internet user.

9. The method in claim 8, wherein the record and redirect routine for ads paid on a per user click basis comprises the steps of:

upon receiving the HTTP request resulted from the Internet user clicking on the hyper-link of the ad pointing back to this routine, extracting the ad identifier and article identifier from the URL parameters;

recording into the ad activity log the current time and one instance of the ad identifier and article identifier pair;

using the ad identifier to extract the ad hyper-link previously removed from the ad content and stored in the ad database in the ad submission process;

sending an HTTP redirect reply back to the Web browser of the Internet user with the ad hyper-link URL pointing to the Web site or shopping channel of the advertiser.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein (g) comprises the steps of:

(a) assigning zero to the royalty amount for each author identified by the author identifier;

(b) assigning zero to the ad cost amount for each advertiser identified by the advertiser identifier;

(c) retrieving one instance of the ad identifier and article identifier pair recorded within the current accounting period from the ad activity log;

(d) using the article identifier to extract the author identifier from the article database;

(e) using the ad identifier to extract the advertiser identifier and ad unit price from the ad database;

(f) adding the ad unit price to the ad cost amount identified by the advertiser identifier;

(g) adding the multiplication product of the ad unit price and a royalty rate to the royalty amount identified by the author identifier;

(h) repeating steps (c) to (h) for the next instance of the ad identifier and article identifier pair recorded within the current accounting period until all such instances are processed in the ad activity log;

(i) for each non-zero royalty amount, using the author identifier to extract the author billing information from the author database to pay the corresponding author;

(j) for each non-zero ad cost amount, using the advertiser identifier to extract the advertiser billing information from the advertiser database to bill the corresponding advertiser.

11. A method for conducting Internet-based online publishing and advertising forums in which authors are rewarded with a recurrent royalty drawn from the advertising revenue generated specifically by the articles they published through ads placed at run-time by third party advertising agents comprising:

(a) an author registration process of inputting the contact and billing information of a author and a new unique author identifier into to an author database; and

repeating the same for other authors not previously registered;

(b) an article submission process of inputting the full content of an article, a new unique article identifier and the corresponding author identifier into to an article database; and

repeating the same for other articles by the same or different registered author;

(c) an ad channel registration process of applying for an ad channel for each registered author from at least one third party advertising agent, converting the assigned ad channel into ad channel identifier applicable to the forum database system, and inputting the ad channel identifier and the corresponding author identifier into an ad channel database;

(d) a Web presentation process of displaying the information of and hyper-links to all available articles on an Internet Web site organized based on the subject matters of the articles, thus allowing Internet users to browse through and drill down to different categories and groups of articles and ultimately click on the hyper-link to an article to view its full content;

(e) an article delivery process of, upon the forum Web server receiving an HTTP request sent by the Web browser of an Internet user to access the full content of an available article, delivering a Web version of the article that includes reserved ad spaces for ads provided by third party ad agents;

(f) an accounting process of periodically receiving from at least one ad agent the ad revenue payment and an ad performance report detailing the total earnings of each ad channel, and paying authors whose articles contributed to the ad revenue of that period.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein (d) the hyper-link to an article includes the article identifier as a hyper-link URL parameter;

13. The method of claim 11, wherein (d) further comprises of providing a search engine function on the Web site to allow Internet users to search among all articles available on the forum for certain keyword(s), and displaying in a list the information of and hyper-links to the articles matching the search criteria.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the hyper-link to an article matching the search criteria includes the article identifier as a hyper-link URL parameter.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein (e) comprises the steps of:

parsing the URL of the HTTP request for the article to extract the article identifier;

using the article identifier to extract the article content from the article database;

inserting the article content into a HTML Web article template with reserved ad spaces;

inserting the appropriate HTML code into the ad spaces as required by the ad agents;

transmitting the completed HTML Web article with reserved ad spaces to the Web browser of the Internet user.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein (f) further comprises the steps of:

(a) retrieving one ad channel and its corresponding total ad earning from the ad performance report and converting the ad channel to ad channel identifier applicable to the ad channel database;

(b) using the ad channel identifier to extract the author identifier from the ad channel database;

(c) calculating the royalty amount by multiplying the total ad earning by a royalty rate;

(d) using the author identifier to extract the author billing information to pay the corresponding author;

(e) repeating steps (a) to (e) for the next ad channel until all ad channels in the report are processed.

17. A system for conducting Internet-based online publishing and advertising forums in which authors are rewarded with a recurrent royalty drawn from the advertising revenue generated specifically by the articles they published comprising:

at least one server computer;

at least one database management system running on a server computer with minimum capabilities of storing a set of data along with a unique piece of data called the key or identifier, and

retrieving a set of data by matching its corresponding key with a supplied key;

at least one Web server program running on a server computer that provides at least one Web site;

an accounting program.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the Web site comprises:

an author registration interface for new authors to enter their contact and billing information;

an article submission interface for registered authors to submit articles;

an advertiser registration interface for new advertisers to enter their contact and billing information;

an ad submission interface for registered advertisers to submit ads and ad preferences;

an article catalog interface consisting of a main category Web page, a plurality of sub-category Web pages of different subject matters, and a plurality of base category Web pages with information of and hyper-links to the full contents of available articles;

an article delivery program for receiving HTTP requests for the full content of an article and delivering a Web version of the article with inserted ads.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the article delivery program is further capable of:

recording into the database ad performance data, including ad impressions and user clicks, and the association between an ad, the advertiser of the ad, the article in which the ad resides and the author of the article;

or

inserting a piece of HTML code into the reserved ad spaces of the Web version of the article as required by a third party advertising agent to facilitate such agent to deliver ad content to the Web browser of the Internet user displaying the article.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the accounting program is run in a regular interval to calculate:

the royalty due to each author and the total ad cost for each advertiser within that accounting period based on the recorded ad performance data, including ad impressions and user clicks, and the association between an ad, the ad pricing, the advertiser of the ad, the article in which the ad resides and the author of the article;

or

the total amount of royalty due to each author within that accounting period based on the ad performance report from the third party ad agent detailing the total earnings of each ad channel, which corresponds to a registered author of the forum.