Method and system for providing targeted content to a surfer

• US 8,260,846 B2
• Filed: 07/16/2009
• Issued: 09/04/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LivePerson Incorporated
• Original Assignee: LivePerson Incorporated
• Inventors: Lahav, Shlomo
• Primary Examiner(s): BILGRAMI, ASGHAR H
• Application Number:
  US12/503,925
• Publication Number:
  US 20100023581A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,146 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 705/14.4, 705/14.43, 705/14.49, 715/745
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements

Abstract

A system and method for providing targeted content to a surfer is disclosed. Exemplary embodiments of the present invention seek to provide novel solutions for determining which content object, taken from a group of content objects, will be best suited for presentation in association with a link on a web page that has been requested by a certain surfer. Exemplary types of content objects may comprise the text, topic, font, color or other attribute of an external advertisement or internal advertisement. Still other content objects may comprise the specific design of the object, an image, the design of the page in which the object is presented, etc. The decision process for selecting a content object can be based on predictive information that is associated with the request, such as a common HTTP request, or historical information about the surfer. Exemplary associated predictive information may include the day and time of receipt of the request for the web page, the IP address and\or domain from which the request was sent, the type and the version of the browser application that is used for requesting the web page, or the URL used by a surfer for requesting the web page with the parameters that are attached to the URL.

Claims

1. A method for selecting a configuration of a presently requested web page, wherein the configuration defines a subset of one or more selected objects from a set of objects, the method comprising:

receiving a request for the presently requested web page;

retrieving a predictive information that is related to the request;

storing the retrieved predictive information;

processing the stored predictive information for defining a value for each one of a plurality of predictive factors;

placing the defined value of one or more predictive factors from the plurality of predictive factors in each one of a plurality of predictive models, wherein each predictive model is associated with an object from the set of objects and calculating a predictive value for each one of the objects in the set of objects; and

a server automatically selecting one or more objects to be included in the configuration of the presently requested webpage, wherein the expected utility of the configuration has a high value by;

defining one or more possible configurations for the requested webpage;

calculating, per each possible configuration, the expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in each one of the possible configurations in view of other objects that are included in the configuration;

defining the expected utility of the configuration as a function of the calculated expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in the configuration; and

selecting the configuration with the highest average of the calculated expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in the configuration as the configuration of the requested webpage.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the predictive information is obtained by parsing the request.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information is a behavioral information, and wherein the behavioral information represents the surfer'"'"'s past behavior.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the behavioral information is embedded within a cookie.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the behavioral information is time dependent.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the behavioral information includes information selected from a group consisting of:

the time of one or more previous visits of the surfer in a domain that includes the requested webpage;

the time that the surfer requested a certain web page;

the number of the surfer'"'"'s visits in the domain, the number of times that a certain object has been presented to the surfer, and the number of times that a certain object has been selected by the surfer.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information comprises nominal values.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information comprises a string of text.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information comprises ordinal values.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information has cyclic values.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information includes information selected from a group consisting of:

a surfer'"'"'s IP address, a receiving time of a request, a browser application used by a surfer and a URL that is associated with a request.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the expected utility of the configuration reflects the benefit that will be created when the surfer responds to the presented web page by selecting one of the objects from the subset of objects.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information includes information on attributes of the surfer that sent the request.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive information includes information on attributes of the requested web page.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of objects defines page design features.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the information on attributes of the surfer includes information on at least one attribute selected from a group of attributes consisting of:

gender, age, location, and purchase habits.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein the information on attributes of the requested webpage includes information on at least one attribute selected from a group of attributes consisting of:

type of product, page design attributes.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the retrieved predictive information comprises storing the predictive information in an active surfer table.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the retrieved predictive information, further comprises transferring the request towards its destination.

16. A method for selecting a configuration of a presently requested web page, wherein the configuration defines a subset of one or more selected objects from a set of objects, the method comprising:

receiving a request for the presently requested web page;

retrieving a predictive information that is related to the request;

storing the retrieved predictive information;

processing the stored predictive information for defining a value for each one of a plurality of predictive factors;

placing the defined value of one or more predictive factors from the plurality of predictive factors in each one of a plurality of predictive models, wherein each predictive model is associated with an object from the set of objects and calculating a predictive value for each one of the objects in the set of objects; and

a server automatically selecting one or more objects to be included in the configuration of the presently requested webpage, wherein the expected utility of the configuration has a high value by;

defining one or more possible configurations for the requested webpage;

calculating, per each possible configuration, the expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in each one of the possible configurations in view of other objects that are included in the configuration;

defining the expected utility of the configuration as a function of the calculated expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in the configuration; and

selecting the configuration with the highest sum of the calculated expected utility of each one of the objects that are included in the configuration as the configuration of the requested webpage.