Cost-per-action market driven advertising fee sharing
First Claim
1. An Internet search engine comprising:
- a web server for generating search results pages to be displayed by web clients;
one or more databases storing merchant product pricing and merchant discount data; and
a system controller for parsing client requests and pulling merchant product pricing data and merchant discount data from the database for populating the search results pages, where merchant pricing data and merchant discount data for a plurality of merchants are displayed on a search results page in an order determined by each merchant'"'"'s pricing data and discount data.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A competitive environment in which merchants compete for sales in a reverse auction format in which there are many sellers and a single buyer is disclosed. Merchants purchase prominent placement on product search results lists based on a negotiable per-sale fee. A customer discount is derived from the per-sale fee negotiated with each merchant. The customer discount may be shared with customers by subtracting the customer discount from a merchant market price. The result is a final customer price that determines the merchant'"'"'s position in the product search results list. Merchants having the lowest final customer price are placed at the top of the search results list, while merchants having higher final customer prices are placed further down the list. Merchants may influence their position on the search results list by agreeing to pay a different amount for each sale.
83 Citations
62 Claims
-
1. An Internet search engine comprising:
-
a web server for generating search results pages to be displayed by web clients;
one or more databases storing merchant product pricing and merchant discount data; and
a system controller for parsing client requests and pulling merchant product pricing data and merchant discount data from the database for populating the search results pages, where merchant pricing data and merchant discount data for a plurality of merchants are displayed on a search results page in an order determined by each merchant'"'"'s pricing data and discount data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
-
-
11. An advertising method comprising:
-
providing a comparison shopping engine adapted to display one or more merchants offering a particular product for sale;
identifying a product price for each of the one or more merchants offering the product for sale;
entering a price-per-sale agreement with each of the at least one merchants, where each merchant agrees to pay an advertising fee for each completed product sale initiated through the comparison shopping engine;
calculating a price discount for each merchant based on the particular price-per-sale advertising fee separately agreed to by each merchant;
calculating a final price for each merchant by subtracting the price discount calculated for each merchant from each merchant'"'"'s product price; and
displaying the one or more merchants offering the particular product for sale in a list ordered according to the final product price calculated for each of the at least one merchants. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
-
-
23. A method of providing price discounts to customers using a comparison shopping engine to locate products, the method comprising:
-
entering a price-per-sale agreement with at least one merchant in which the merchant agrees to pay an advertising fee for each completed sale of a product to a customer who has been directed to the merchant via the comparison shopping engine; and
offering a portion of the advertising fee to a customer as a price discount when the customer who has been directed to the merchant by the comparison shopping engine purchases the product from the merchant. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
-
-
30. A method of advertising comprising:
-
agreeing to pay an adjustable advertising fee to an operator of an internet search engine comparison shopping engine adapted to display merchant advertisements offering a particular product for sale, wherein the merchants are listed in order of a final customer price calculated based on a merchant'"'"'s product price and a customer discount based on the adjustable advertising fee agreed to be paid by the merchant;
providing a customer price to the internet search engine; and
adjusting the adjustable advertising fee by an amount sufficient to alter the order in which merchants are listed by the internet search engine. - View Dependent Claims (31)
-
-
32. A method of creating competitive market driven advertising rates comprising:
-
providing an advertising space where a plurality of merchants selling a common product may place advertisements;
providing a mechanism for directing customers from the advertising space to a sales facility associated with each merchant such that sales of the product resulting from customers having been directed from the advertising space to the sales facility associated with a particular merchant may be attributed to the merchant'"'"'s advertisement in the advertising space;
entering an adjustable price-per-sale advertising agreement with each of the plurality of merchants, in which each merchant agrees to pay a fee for each product sale attributed to the merchant'"'"'s advertisement in the advertising space; and
arranging merchant advertisements in the advertising space based on the amount of the fee each merchant agrees to pay for each product sale, such that a merchant may improve the position of its advertisement within the advertising space by increasing the amount of the fee it agrees to pay relative to the amount of the fee agreed to be paid by other merchants. - View Dependent Claims (33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
-
-
42. A method of achieving a result comprising:
-
defining the result;
charging a first party a fee each time the result is achieved;
sharing a portion of the fee with a second party responsible for achieving the result. - View Dependent Claims (43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50)
-
-
51. The method of achieving a result of claim 51 wherein an amount of the fee shared with the customer is a fixed proportion of the fee paid by the merchant for the sale.
-
52. A method of advertising comprising:
-
providing an advertising medium;
presenting a merchant selling a product in the advertising medium;
charging the merchant a fee each time a specified act is performed by a customer; and
sharing a portion of the fee with the customer who performs the specified act. - View Dependent Claims (53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62)
-
Specification