Determining the relevance of offers

• US 8,458,033 B2
• Filed: 08/11/2003
• Issued: 06/04/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Inventors: Graham, Paul
• Primary Examiner(s): Myhre, James W
• Assistant Examiner(s): GOLDMAN, MICHAEL H
• Application Number:
  US10/639,811
• Publication Number:
  US 20050038893A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,585 Days
• Field of Search: 705/14, 705/14.43, 705/14.49, 705/14.52, 705/14.66
• US Class Current: 705/14.52
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute

Abstract

Offers are targeted to consumers by comparing offer profiles and consumer profiles. Offer profiles are created by analyzing the cumulative content of communications associated with consumers who respond to the offers. Consumer profiles are created by analyzing the cumulative content of communications associated with a user of an electronic communications system. An offer may be selected to be sent to a user based on the relative similarity between the user'"'"'s consumer profile and the offer profile.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of determining relevance of offers to consumers, the method comprising:

(a) providing a profile server, the profile server configured to;

(i) construct a plurality of offer profiles, each of the offer profiles associated with an offer and based at least in part on statistical properties of consumer communications unrelated to the offer, a subset of the consumer communications being associated with consumers to which the offers were previously sent;

(ii) construct a plurality of consumer profiles, each of the consumer profiles associated with a consumer and based on statistical properties of communications associated with the respective consumer; and

(iii) determine a relevancy of one of the offers to one of the consumers by comparing the offer profiles associated with the offers to a consumer profile associated with the consumer; and

(b) a web server, the web server configured to present one or more of the offers to the consumer based at least in part on the determined relevancy.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising, prior to step a), sending, via an email server, the at least one of the offers to at least one of the consumers.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising, prior to step a), receiving via an email server, information about a response to one of the offers by one of the consumers to whom the offer was sent.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising basing the offer profiles at least in part on the received information.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising attributing a weighting factor to the at least one communication unrelated to the offer, the weighting factor being reflective of the received information, and being based at least in part on a consumer'"'"'s response to the offer.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one of the communications unrelated to the offer comprises an electronic communication.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the electronic communication comprises at least one of an email message, an instant message, or voice.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one of the communications associated with the consumer comprises an electronic communication.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the electronic communication comprises at least one of an electronic mail message, an instant message, or voice.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one of the offers comprises an advertisement.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the statistical properties comprise text use frequency statistics of the communications.

12. A system for determining relevance of offers to users of an electronic communications system, the system comprising:

a) a first profile server for determining an offer profile for an offer based at least in part on statistical properties of communications unrelated to the offer, a subset of the communications being associated with consumers to which the offer was previously sent;

b) a second profile server for determining a consumer profile for a user of the electronic communications system, the consumer profile based at least in part on statistical properties of electronic communications associated with the users of the electronic communications system; and

c) a comparison engine for comparing the offer profile to the consumer profile to determine the relevance of the offer to the user.

13. The system of claim 12 further comprising a delivery engine for delivering one or more offers to the users of the electronic communications system.

14. The system of claim 13 further comprising a receiver for receiving information about a response to one of the offers to one of the users of the electronic communications system.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the first profile server is further configured to assign a weighting factor to a communication unrelated to the offer, the weighting factor reflective of the received information and being based at least in part on the user'"'"'s response to the offer.

16. The system of claim 12 further comprising a database server for storing at least one of the offer, the offer profile, the consumer profile, the information about a response by a user of the electronic communications system to the one or more offers delivered to the user of the electronic communications system, and the electronic communication.

17. The system of claim 12 further comprising a communications server for facilitating communications among the users of the electronic communications system.

18. The system of claim 12 wherein the statistical properties comprise text use frequency statistics of the communications.