System and Method for Marketing Mobile Advertising Supplies

• US 20150332329A1
• Filed: 05/19/2015
• Published: 11/19/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: xAd, Inc
• Original Assignee: xAd, Inc
• Inventors: Luo, Huitao, Khatri, Nishant, Muttineni, Prakash, Sharma, Dipanshu, Anderson, Stephen, Schwartz, Jonathan, Chock, David, Venkatesan, Srihari, Rekouts, George, Tuo, Shanshan, Liang, Can
• Granted Patent: US 10,939,258 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0261 based on user location
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0267 Wireless devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0275 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/021 Services related to particular areas, e.g. point of interest [POI] services, venue services or geofences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/21 for social networking applications

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a mobile advertising platform in which mobile user locations and other information are translated into indications of mobile user intent to approach certain businesses, and advertisers can fill mobile advertising requests or choose to price their bids for mobile supplies based on such indications. In certain embodiments, pre-defined places associated with business/brand names are created, and mobile advertising requests are processed to determine if the associated with mobile devices have triggered any of these pre-defined places. If a mobile advertising request is determined to have triggered one or more of the pre-defined places, it is annotated with the triggered place(s), and advertisements are selected based on the triggered places and other factors. The annotated requests with the triggered places can also be commodities in a location market place, which are auctioned to the mobile advertisers, who can place their bids on the triggered places.

Claims

1. A method performed by a computer system coupled to a packet-based network to process advertisement (ad) requests, the method comprising:

receiving an ad request from the packet-based network, the ad request being associated with a mobile device;

estimating a location of the mobile device based on information in the ad request;

determining if the estimated location of the mobile device triggers one or more pre-defined places in a geo-fence database stored in a storage device;

generating an annotated ad request including one or more triggered places, the one or more triggered places including a first place, the first place being represented by a place type and at least one of a category, a brand name, and a place identifier.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the place type being selected from the group consisting of:

a business center, a business premise and a business region.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

searching in an ad database for one or more matching ads that match the annotated request, selecting an ad from the one or more matching ads, and transmit the selected ad to the packet-based network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein each respective matching ad in the one or more matching ads is associated with a respective place that matches a respective one of the one or more triggered places in the annotated request.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the ad request includes an identifier identifying the mobile device or a mobile user thereof, and wherein selecting an ad from the one or more matching ads comprises consulting a mobile user intent profile associated with the identifier in a mobile user intent profile database.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein selecting an ad from the one or more matching ads comprises consulting a retargeting database storing information about mobile users who have visited a geographical location corresponding to one of the triggered places.

7. The method of claim 3, wherein selecting an ad from the one or more matching ads comprises consulting statistical data associated with at least one of the one or more triggered places.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the annotated request further includes a price for each of the one or more places, the method further comprising transmitting the annotated ad request to the packet-based network.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

receiving a bid for one of the one or more triggered places in the annotated request, the bid including a bidder identifier, a request identifier, and a bid price.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein comprising:

searching in an ad database for one or more matching ads that match the annotated request, selecting an ad from the one or more matching ads, and determining whether to accept the bid based on the bid price and prices associated with the one or more matching ads.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein estimating a location of the mobile device comprises:

determining if the ad request includes a set of geographic coordinates that meet a set of predefined criteria;

in response to the set of geographic coordinates in the ad request not meeting the set of predefined criteria, determining if the ad request includes an IP address and querying an IP region database using the IP address; and

in response to finding a matching IP address in the IP region database, using geographical coordinates associated with the matching IP address in the IP region database as the estimated location of the mobile devise.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising attaching a confidence factor to the first request based on the geographical coordinates associated with the matching IP address.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the geographical coordinates are associated with a geographic region and the confidence factor is dependent on the size of the geographic region.

14. A system coupled to a packet-based network to process an advertisement (ad) request received from the packet-based network, the ad request being associated with a mobile device, comprising:

a location module that estimates a location of the mobile device based on information in the ad request;

a geo-fencing module that determines if the estimated location of the mobile device triggers one or more pre-defined places in a geo-fence database stored in a storage device; and

an annotation module that generates an annotated ad request including one or more triggered places, the one or more triggered places including a first place, the first place being represented by a place type and at least one of a category, a brand name, and a place identifier.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the place type being selected from the group consisting of:

a business center, a business premise and a business region.

16. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

a matching module that searches in an ad database for one or more matching ads that match the annotated request, and a ranking module that selects an ad from the one or more matching ads, and transmit the selected ad to the packet-based network.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the ad request includes an identifier identifying the mobile device or a mobile user thereof, and wherein the ranking module selects an ad from the one or more matching ads by consulting a mobile user intent profile associated with the identifier in a mobile user intent profile database.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the ranking module selects an ad from the one or more matching ads by consulting a retargeting database storing information about mobile users who have visited a geographical location corresponding to one of the triggered places.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the ranking module selects an ad from the one or more matching ads by consulting statistical data associated with at least one of the one or more triggered places.

20. The system of claim 14, further comprising an ad market place interface that transmits the annotated ad request to the packet-based network, and that receives a bid for one of the one or more triggered places in the annotated request, the bid including a bidder identifier, a request identifier, and a bid price.