AFFILIATE INVESTIGATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20130030916A1
• Filed: 07/25/2011
• Published: 01/31/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Performance Horizon Group Limited
• Original Assignee: BrandVerity Inc. (Performance Horizon Group Ltd.)
• Inventors: Skalet, Andrew, Kim, Hyung-Joon, Naffziger, David
• Granted Patent: US 8,892,459 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.58
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/018 Certifying business or products
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

Given an advertisement placed by a rogue affiliate that takes steps to hide its affiliate ID from affiliate investigators, the affiliate ID may be identified using a step-wise link follower to process the advertisement'"'"'s target URIs. For each redirection step inclusively between the original target URI and the ultimate destination URI, the current URI is analyzed and requested according to either a trusted request method or a non-trusted request method depending on whether the resource to which the URI refers is known to be a trusted resource. The non-trusted request method is designed to thwart the rogue affiliate'"'"'s efforts to identify an affiliate investigator as the source of the request.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for identifying an affiliate ID associated with an advertisement for an e-commerce merchant website, the advertisement comprising a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) referring to a target resource that is not part of the e-commerce merchant website, the method comprising:

a) determining, by the computer, whether the URI includes an affiliate ID;

b) when the URI includes said affiliate ID, associating said affiliate ID with the advertisement in an affiliate-tracking database; and

c) when the URI does not include said affiliate ID, processing the target resource, by the computer, according to a resource-processing sub-method comprising steps i-vi;

i) determining whether said target resource is a known-trusted resource;

ii) selecting a request method from a group comprising a trusted-resource request method and a non-trusted-resource request method, said request method being selected from said group according to whether said target resource is determined to be a known-trusted resource;

iii) requesting the target resource according to said selected request method;

iv) receiving a response corresponding to the requested target resource;

v) determining whether said response indicates a redirect to a redirect URI; and

vi) when said response indicates said redirect to said redirect URI, repeating steps a-c to process said redirect URI.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said trusted-resource request method includes the computer accurately identifying itself as an affiliate-investigating web robot.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said non-trusted-resource request method includes the computer inaccurately identifying itself as a non-robot user.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said trusted-resource request method comprises requesting the target resource from one of a first pool of network addresses, and wherein said non-trusted-resource request method comprises requesting the target resource from one of a second pool of a network addresses, said first and second pools of network addresses being distinct from one another.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said first pool of a network addresses are publicly attributable to an affiliate investigating entity, and wherein said second pool of a network addresses are not publicly attributable to said affiliate investigating entity.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said resource-processing sub-method further comprises, when said response does not indicate said redirect to said redirect URI:

determining whether said response corresponds to the e-commerce merchant website; and

when said response corresponds to the e-commerce merchant website and no affiliate ID has been associated with the advertisement in said affiliate-tracking database, flagging the advertisement in said affiliate-tracking database as under suspicion of hiding said affiliate ID.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said resource-processing sub-method further comprises, when said response does not indicate said redirect to said redirect URI:

determining whether said response corresponds to the e-commerce merchant website; and

when said response does not correspond to the e-commerce merchant website, flagging the advertisement in said affiliate-tracking database as under suspicion of hiding said affiliate ID.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising, when the URI does not include said affiliate ID, iteratively processing the target resource according to a plurality of iterations of said resource-processing sub-method.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said plurality of iterations are timed to respectively occur at a plurality of dispersed times of day.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein said plurality of iterations are configured such that each appears to originate from a distinct one of a plurality of dispersed geographical locations.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a source resource on which the advertisement appears.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein said non-trusted-resource request method comprises inaccurately requesting the target resource as if the target resource were being requested as a result of following said hyperlink.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

determining a time-of-day period during which the advertisement appeared on said source resource on a first day; and

wherein processing the target resource according to said resource-processing sub-method occurs during the same time-of-day period on a second, subsequent day.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a target geographical region at which the advertisement is targeted.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein said non-trusted-resource request method comprises requesting the target resource from a network address that is publicly associated with said target geographical region.

16. A non-transient computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a processor, configure the processor to perform the method of claim 1.

17. A computing apparatus comprising a processor and a memory having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to perform the method of claim 1.

18. A computer-implemented method of determining whether a given affiliate ID represents an affiliate that participates in a merchant'"'"'s affiliate program, the method comprising:

obtaining, by the computer, a known affiliate ID corresponding to a known affiliate that participates in the merchant'"'"'s affiliate program;

obtaining, by the computer, a model Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) referring to a known resource associated with the merchant and said known affiliate ID;

requesting, by the computer, said known resource using said model URI;

receiving, by the computer, a model response corresponding to the model URI;

generating, by the computer using said model URI, a tentative URI referring to an tentative resource that, if it exists, would be associated with the merchant and the given affiliate ID;

requesting, by the computer, said tentative resource using said tentative URI;

receiving, by the computer, a second response corresponding to the tentative URI;

determining, by the computer, a comparison between said second response and said model response; and

determining, by the computer, whether the given affiliate ID represents an affiliate that participates in the merchant'"'"'s affiliate program according to said comparison.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein determining said comparison comprises determining whether one or both of said second response and said model response comprises an affiliate-tracking cookie.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein determining said comparison comprises determining whether said second response comprises an error response.

21. A non-transient computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a processor, configure the processor to perform the method of claim 18.

22. A computing apparatus comprising a processor and a memory having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to perform the method of claim 18.