Advertising keyword cross-selling

• US 20070143176A1
• Filed: 12/15/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Zheng, Najm, Tarek, Li, Li, Zhang, Benyu, Li, Ying, Zeng, Hua-Jun, Nong, Shuzhen
• Granted Patent: US 7,788,131 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.490
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0275 Auctions

Abstract

Seed keywords are leveraged to provide expanded keywords that are then associated with relevant advertisers. Instances can also include locating potential advertisers based on the expanded keywords. Inverse lookup techniques are employed to determine which keywords are associated with an advertiser. Filtering can then be employed to eliminate inappropriate keywords for that advertiser. The keywords are then automatically revealed to the advertiser for consideration as relevant search terms for their advertisements. In this manner, revenue for a search engine and/or for an advertiser can be substantially enhanced through the automatic expansion of relevant search terms. Advertisers also benefit by having larger and more relevant search term selections automatically available to them, saving them both time and money.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates advertising keyword cross-selling, comprising:

a receiving component that receives search keywords from a keyword data source; and

a cross-sell pair determination component that determines pairs of expanded keywords and advertisers to facilitate in cross-selling the keywords to the advertisers.

2. They system of claim 1, the keyword data source comprising a search query log and/or an advertisement data source.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a proactive cross-sell component that actively promotes the expanded keywords to the advertisers.

4. The system of claim 3, the proactive cross-sell component automatically contacts advertisers with suggested cross-sell pairs via an electronic medium.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a keyword determination component that expands seed keywords to determine the expanded keywords.

6. The system of claim 5, the keyword determination component employs a funnel search process to facilitate in determining the expanded keywords.

7. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a cross-linking component that indexes expanded keywords to advertisers to facilitate in constructing cross-sell pairs.

8. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a cross-selling filter component that filters inappropriate cross-sell pairs based on attitude and/or cause-effect relationships.

9. The system of claim 8, the cross-selling filter component employs a machine learning classifier to facilitate in filtering the cross-sell pairs.

10. An online advertising auction process that employs the system of claim 1.

11. An online advertising keyword service that employs the system of claim 1 to provide potential advertising keywords to a user.

20. A device employing the system of claim 1 comprising at least one selected from the group consisting of a computer, a server, and a handheld electronic device.

12. A method for facilitating advertising keyword cross-selling, comprising:

obtaining search keywords from a keyword data source;

automatically discovering potential commercially valuable keywords; and

proactively cross-selling the potential commercially valuable keywords to relevant advertisers.

13. The method of claim 12, the keyword data source comprising a search query log and/or an advertisement data source.

14. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

determining seed keywords from the search keywords based on the commercial value;

expanding the seed keywords to determine sequentially and/or conceptually related keywords;

constructing a keyword-to-advertiser inverse index table;

employing the expanded keywords as queries to retrieve relevant advertisers;

assigning a score to advertiser/keyword pairs;

determining a top N most relevant advertisers, where N is an integer from one to infinity; and

filtering inappropriate cross-selling by analyzing attitude and/or cause-effect relationships.

15. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

discovering relevant advertisers based on the potential commercially valuable keywords via a global network.

16. An online advertising auction process that employs the method of claim 12.

17. A method that facilitates keyword expansion, comprising:

obtaining search page views from a search data source;

sessionizing the search page views;

extracting search keywords from each session in order and forming search funnels; and

counting a number of searchers for each keyword to determine sizes of the search funnels.

18. The method of claim 17 further comprising:

consolidating the search funnels utilizing funnel clustering, noise filtering, and/or keyword type categorization.

19. An advertising keyword cross-selling system employing the method of claim 17.