Multi-party web-beacon-based analytics

• US 20080249905A1
• Filed: 06/17/2008
• Published: 10/09/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Omniture Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Error, Brett Michael, Wong, Catherine
• Granted Patent: US 8,365,150 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/972 Access to data in other repository systems, e.g. legacy data or dynamic Web page generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing

Abstract

Tools and techniques are provided to allow partners of analytics providers and others who use web-beacons to submit web-beacon plug-ins for scrutiny, and for the plug-in to either be refused or else to be certified for use in a core JavaScript file or similar component. Analytics providers and others may also write web-beacon plug-ins. Certified plug-ins are executed in response to page loads, visitor clicks, and other visitor and programmatic actions at a website that has been tagged by the analytics provider'"'"'s web-beacon, without requiring re-tagging of the website with a separate web-beacon for the partner. This allows the partner to obtain analytics data by piggybacking on the analytics provider, without re-tagging, and without compromising the availability and accuracy of the analytics data already being gathered. To be certified, web-beacon plug-ins must satisfy specific criteria as to their size, behavior, namespace, and the like.

Claims

1-23. -23. (canceled)

24. A website visitor'"'"'s system configured for multi-party web-beacon-based analytics, the system comprising:

a processor;

a memory configured to work in conjunction with the processor, the memory configured by a web page;

a web-beacon code pasted into the web page in the memory to invoke core analytics code of an analytics provider;

the core analytics code, which contains a plurality of plug-ins from a respective plurality of analytics provider partners, each plug-in being configured to send analytics data from the website visitor'"'"'s system to a corresponding partner server;

wherein multiple partners provide respective plug-ins which are invoked through an analytics provider'"'"'s code base, and which send analytics data to respective servers of the partners.

25. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein each of the plurality of plug-ins from the respective plurality of analytics provider partners has a respective partner-specific namespace.

26. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, further comprising at least two cookies which are read and/or written by respective plug-ins of respective analytics provider partners.

27. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, further comprising a unique visitor ID which is used by the core analytics code and which may be used by a plurality of partner web-beacon plug-ins.

28. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein the system and code are configured to execute partner server call(s) only after executing analytics provider server call(s).

29. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein the core analytics code contains a plurality of plug-ins, the plug-ins belong to execution classes, and plug-ins in one class have higher execution priority than plug-ins in another class.

30. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein the system and code are configured to execute each partner web-beacon plug-in prior to executing an analytics provider server call, such that the analytics provider server call can track partner plug-in usage, and a partner image request will not be sent until after the analytics provider server call.

31. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein the system is configured to send an image request to a server of the analytics provider, and to send a different image request to a server of a partner.

32. The website visitor'"'"'s system of claim 24, wherein the core analytics code comprises a JavaScript file.

33. A web visitor analytics method comprising the steps of:

receiving a web page which is tagged with a web-beacon; and

in response to the web-beacon tag;

sending a web-beacon request containing analytics provider analytics data to an analytics provider server;

sending a web-beacon request containing first partner analytics data to a first partner server; and

sending a web-beacon request containing second partner analytics data to a second partner server;

whereby the method sends different partners different analytics data in response to a single web-beacon tag in a web page.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein the method comprises the following steps in the order indicated:

including a core analytics file into a memory on a web visitor system;

running at least a portion of a first partner plug-in;

running at least a portion of a second partner plug-in;

sending a web-beacon request containing analytics provider analytics data to an analytics provider server;

sending a web-beacon request containing first partner analytics data to a first partner server; and

sending a web-beacon request containing second partner analytics data to a second partner server.

35. The method of claim 33, wherein the step of sending a web-beacon request containing first partner analytics data to a first partner server and the step of sending a web-beacon request containing second partner analytics data to a second partner server each occur after the web page loads into the memory.

36. The method of claim 33, further comprising the step of setting analytics provider variables after including the core analytics file and before running the first partner plug-in.

37. The method of claim 33, further comprising the step of updating an image placeholder.

38. The method of claim 33, further comprising the step of recording information for reporting to the partners.

39. The method of claim 33, further comprising the step of recording information for billing the partners.

40. The method of claim 33, further comprising at least one of:

tracking website user behavior based on a query string;

tracking website user behavior based on interaction with a DOM object;

tracking website user behavior based on viewing of specific website content;

using an event listener;

writing data to a cookie;

reading data from a cookie;

placing an advertisement in a web page for display to a website user;

writing HTML to a web page;

submitting text to be displayed in a web page;

submitting an image to be displayed in a web page;

returning a value;

returning a base URL value;

returning an array of name-value pairs.

41. A web analytics provider method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a first web-beacon plug-in from a first party;

obtaining a second web-beacon plug-in from a second party; and

providing web-beacon code to be pasted into a web page, the web-beacon code configured to invoke core analytics code which is configured to execute the first web-beacon plug-in and to execute the second web-beacon plug-in;

whereby the method provides an infrastructure which allows multiple plug-ins that are written by disparate sources but invoked through a single web-beacon code pasted into a web page.

42. The method of claim 41, further comprising receiving a standard image request, namely, an image request to collect analytics data for the first party and to also collect analytics data for the second party.

43. The method of claim 41, further comprising tracking execution of the web-beacon plug-ins.