Marketing communication and transaction/distribution services platform for building and managing personalized customer relationships

• US 7,158,943 B2
• Filed: 09/04/2002
• Issued: 01/02/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/04/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ramon Van Der Riet
• Original Assignee: Ramon Van Der Riet
• Inventors: van der Riet, Ramon
• Primary Examiner(s): Carlson; Jeffrey D.
• Application Number:
  US10/233,677
• Publication Number:
  US 20030126146A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,581 Days
• Field of Search: 705/14, 705/27
• US Class Current: 705/14.41
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0211 Determining the effectiveness of discounts or incentives
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0224 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0226 Incentive systems for frequent usage, e.g. frequent flyer miles programs or point systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0233 Method of redeeming a frequent usage reward
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0242 Determining effectiveness of advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

An interactive marketing communication and transaction services platform for managing personalized customer relationships. The platform facilitates communication and transactions between consumers, retailers and manufacturers, by helping suppliers customize product/service offerings, presentations and advertising messages to reflect individual consumers'"'"' needs, while providing portals with premium advertising messages for personal interactive info/news/entertainment services. The core of the platform consists of i) a central database system with ‘product/retail information’ and ‘holistic purchase-behavior specific consumer profiles’, generated by registering on-line product/retail information retrieved by consumers, as well as purchases made both on-line and in-store, using a loyalty card; ii) software applications, that create ‘market intelligence’ on manufacturer/retailer offers, consumer purchase needs, market performance of products/retailers and impact of brand/retailer presentations and ads on consumer purchase behavior; and iii) standard performance indicators, that make it possible to benchmark individual consumer communication programs against each other.

Claims

1. A process for increasing advertising effectiveness comprising:

collecting data indicating shopping and purchase behavior history for a plurality of individual consumers, wherein said collecting of data indicating shopping behavior history is performed by parsing log files indicating information each consumer retrieves on-line with respect to products featured in a product presentation database and with respect to retailer categories featured in a retailer category presentation database coupled to a central web-services database system, and said collecting of data indicating purchase behavior history is performed by using benefit cards to capture on-line and in-store sales made to the consumers by a plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, wherein each of the plurality of individual consumers is provided with a benefit card that uniquely identifies an individual consumer and provides the individual consumer with an opportunity to earn points based on purchases made by the individual consumer of the products, said products being manufactured by a plurality of manufacturers and sold by the plurality of retailers at least some of which are independent of the manufacturers;

collecting data indicating advertisement exposure history for each of the individual consumers by logging advertisements served to the consumer along with ad-sponsored content;

providing the individual consumers with access to ad-sponsored content that includes at least one from the group consisting of news, music, games, entertainment or shopping content, and wherein the ad-sponsored content is provided to each individual consumer in exchange for at least one of redemption of points earned by the consumer using the benefit card and access to the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and advertisement exposure history of the consumer;

generating a consumer profile for each of the individual consumers from the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and data indicating advertisement exposure history collected for the consumer;

providing the product presentation database, coupled to the central web-services database system, that stores product presentation data for the products featured in the product presentation and retailer category presentation databases;

storing, by a plurality of the manufacturers or by one or more of the retailers in the case of retailer branded private label products, product presentation data in the product presentation database;

providing the retailer category presentation database, coupled to the central web-services database system, that stores product category presentation data for the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, wherein at least one of the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database includes references to product presentation data stored by a plurality of the manufacturers in the product presentation database;

storing, by the one or more retailers, product category presentation data in the retailer category presentation database;

storing a plurality of advertisements in an ad message database coupled to the central web-services database system;

confirming a plurality of orders associated with the advertisements, wherein each of the plurality of orders specifies at least one advertisement for an advertiser that corresponds to at least one of the retailers or manufacturers or for one or more products offered for sale by the advertiser, an ad frequency objective for each advertisement associated with the order, a target audience for the each advertisement associated with the order and the ad-sponsored content requested by members of the target audience for the each advertisement associated with the order, and wherein the ad frequency objective for at least one advertisement specified in the order requires multiple exposures of the advertisement to at least one member of the target audience;

for each advertisement specified in each of the plurality of orders;

identifying the target audience associated with the advertisement by selecting individual consumers having consumer profiles that match a target audience definition supplied with the order associated with the advertisement, wherein the consumer profiles used for identifying the individual consumers in the target audience were generated from the collected data indicating shopping behavior history with respect to the products featured in the product presentation database and with respect to the retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and data indicating advertisement exposure history collected for the consumers;

wherein at least one target audience identified for at least one of the advertisements corresponds to individual consumers from a plurality of retailers;

selecting, by an ad server system coupled to the ad message database of the central web-services database system, the advertisement from the ad message database in accordance with an ad-sponsored content request by a consumer from a first portion of the target audience, the ad frequency objective specified for the advertisement in the advertising order, and the ad-sponsored content specified for the advertisement in the advertising order;

serving the selected advertisement to the consumer along with the ad-sponsored content;

monitoring, independently of the serving of the selected advertisement, the shopping and on-line and in-store purchase behavior of consumers from the first portion of the target audience that have been exposed to the selected advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content and a control group of consumers, belonging to a second portion of the target audience, that have not been exposed to the selected advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content, wherein said shopping behavior of the consumers from the first and second portions of the target audience is monitored with respect to at least one product or retailer associated with the selected advertisement by parsing the log files indicating information each consumer retrieves on-line corresponding to products featured in the product presentation database and retailer categories featured in the retailer category presentation database coupled to the central web-services database system, and wherein the on-line and in-store purchase behavior of the consumers from the first and second portions of the target audience is monitored with respect to at least one product or retailer associated with the selected advertisement by using the benefit cards to capture on-line and in-store sales made to the consumers from the first and second portions of the target audience;

calculating one or more effectiveness indicators of the selected advertisement based on at least the monitored shopping and purchase behavior of the consumers from the first portion of the target audience that have been exposed to the selected advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content and the control group of consumers belonging to the second portion of the target audience that have not been exposed to the selected advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content, with respect to the at least one product or retailer associated with the selected advertisement; and

providing the one or more effectiveness indicators of the selected advertisement to the advertiser.

2. The process of claim 1, further comprising:

generating benchmarking information by benchmarking the one or more effectiveness indicators of the selected advertisement against one or more effectiveness indicators of other advertisements; and

providing the one or more effectiveness indicators of the selected advertisement and the benchmarking information to the advertiser.

3. The process of claim 1, further comprising:

providing each individual consumer with a capacity to change personal data and delete the collected data indicating shopping and purchase behavior history of the consumer and data indicating advertisement exposure history collected for the consumer;

wherein said capacity is provided after the individual consumer is given access to the ad-sponsored content in exchange for at least one of redemption of points earned by the consumer using the benefit card and access to the collected data indicating shopping behavior history, the collected data indicating purchase behavior history captured using the benefit cards of on-line and in-store sales made by the plurality of retailers of the products featured in the product presentation database and the retailer category presentation database, and the advertisement exposure history of the consumer.

4. The process of claim 1, further comprising:

(a) exposing the control group of consumers belonging to the second portion of the target audience to a mass-media reference advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content, wherein the mass-media reference advertisement is an actual advertisement associated with the advertiser of the selected advertisement, wherein the mass-media reference advertisement is different from the selected advertisement;

(b) calculating the one or more effectiveness indicators of the selected advertisement based on the monitored shopping and purchase behavior of the consumers from the first portion of the target audience that have been exposed to the selected advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content and the control group of consumers belonging to the second portion of the target audience that have been exposed to the mass-media reference advertisement along with the ad-sponsored content with respect to the at least one product or retailer associated with the selected advertisement; and

(c) generating benchmarking information by indexing at least one effectiveness indicator of the selected advertisement against an effectiveness indicator of the mass-media reference advertisement.

5. The process of claim 4, further comprising:

(d) repeating steps (a)–

(c) for each of a plurality of selected advertisements served to consumers;

(e) weighting the effectiveness indicator of each of the selected advertisements that were served to the consumers with a number of times each of the selected advertisements was delivered to a consumer as a percentage of a total number of advertisements delivered to consumers; and

(f) determining an overall performance indicator by summing the weighted effectiveness indicators of each of the selected advertisements.

6. The process of claim 5, further comprising:

(g) benchmarking the overall performance indicator against other overall performance indicators;

(h) providing the overall performance indicator determined in step (f), the other overall performance indicators and benchmarking information from step (g) to the advertiser; and

(i) providing the overall performance indicator determined in step (f), the other overall performance indicators and benchmarking information from step (g) to a provider of the ad-sponsored content.