Peer-to-peer advertisement platform

• US 8,548,853 B2
• Filed: 06/08/2005
• Issued: 10/01/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/08/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: LOT Network Inc.
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Zhang, Benyu, Zeng, Fengping, Zeng, Hua-Jun, Li, Li, Najm, Tarek, Ma, Wei-Ying, Li, Ying, Chen, Zheng
• Primary Examiner(s): Weiss, John G
• Assistant Examiner(s): CHORNESKY, ADAM B
• Application Number:
  US11/147,247
• Publication Number:
  US 20060282309A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,037 Days
• Field of Search: 705/14, 705/10, 705/14.1, 705/14.46, 705/14.49, 705/14.16, 705/14.31, 705/14.32, 705/14.72, 705/14.47, 375/E7.026, 375/E7.089, 709/217
• US Class Current: 705/14.49
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0247 Calculate past, present or future revenues
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements

Abstract

A peer-to-peer advertisement platform is provided to ubiquitously promote products or services supplied by advertisers across content-based applications executing on nodes in a peer-to-peer network. The peer-to-peer advertisement platform may include a registration component to register nodes in the peer-to-peer advertising platform, an advertisement submission component to receive advertisement data from the advertisers, and a distribution component to distribute the advertisement data to the nodes registered in the peer-to-peer advertisement platform. The peer-to-peer advertisement platform also includes a money sharing component to reward nodes based on a contribution level assigned to the node. Accordingly, the peer-to-peer advertisement platform stores the advertisement data locally at the plurality of nodes registered in the peer-to-peer advertising platform and shares a portion of the revenue generated from the advertisement data with the nodes registered in the peer-to-peer advertising platform.

Claims

1. A method to reward nodes in a peer-to-peer network environment, the method comprising:

signing, at a server computer, the advertisement data to avoid fraudulent modification before advertisements are distributed to the nodes in the peer-to-peer network;

storing multiple copies of the advertisements at multiple nodes proximate to a location associated with the advertisement to alleviate traffic load;

receiving click or transaction requests corresponding to an advertisement;

retrieving the advertisement from a computing node in the peer-to-peer network, wherein the computing node is registered in a mesh that includes n proximate computers, n is a real number, and a master computing node is selected by several computing nodes in one or more meshes based on processing speed or storage capacity, and the one or more meshes are assigned levels that correspond to processing speeds or storage capacity;

tracking the click or transaction requests to determine a utilization of the node; and

generating, by the server computer, a reward based on the utilization of the node, wherein generating a reward based on the utilization of the node further comprises;

(1) determining an amount of contribution of the node when retrieving the advertisement; and

(2) rewarding the node when the contribution of the node is above a predetermined contribution level; and

redistributing the advertisements stored on the nodes when one node surpasses a reward threshold, thereby providing opportunities for other nodes in the peer-to-peer network to receive rewards.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the node is registered and includes n computers, n is a real number.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining the contribution of the node further comprises:

determining a time period, and a percentage of node resources utilized when the advertisement is retrieved.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the reward is a percentage of a revenue generated by the advertisement retrieved from the node.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the reward is at least one of gifts, coupons, software and storage space.

6. A computer-implemented method to distribute advertisements in a peer-to-peer network environment, the method comprising:

registering a plurality of computing nodes in a peer-to-peer advertisement platform;

receiving advertisement data from a plurality of advertisers;

categorizing, by a central server node, the advertisement data, wherein categorizing the received advertisement data comprises;

extracting keywords and location information from the advertisement data, and

storing the keyword and location information;

distributing the advertisement data to the plurality of computing nodes registered in the peer-to-peer advertisement platform, wherein distributing the advertisement data further comprises;

selecting a computing node from the plurality of computing nodes having a location corresponding to the location information extracted from the advertisement data, and

sending the advertisement data to the selected computing node, and storing the advertisement data at the selected computing node, which includes a subset of the plurality of computing nodes;

logging advertisement data requests;

analyzing the advertisement data requests; and

redistributing the advertisement data to optimize the load on the peer-to-peer network.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein analyzing the advertisement requests further comprises:

determining a number of computing node impressions from the advertisement data requests; and

calculating node utilization based on the number of computing node impressions.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein redistributing the advertisement data further comprises:

moving the advertisement data from a node having high utilization to a computing node having low utilization.

9. A system for a peer-to-peer advertisement platform, the system comprising:

a server computer executing the following;

a registration component to register a plurality of computing nodes in the peer-to-peer advertisement platform;

an advertisement submission component to receive advertisement data from a plurality of advertisers;

a distribution component to distribute the received advertisement data to the plurality of computing nodes registered in the peer-to-peer advertisement platform;

a money sharing component to generate rewards based on a utilization of advertisement data stored by at least one computing node of the plurality of computing nodes, wherein the money sharing component determines utilization by dividing actual usage by the advertisement data and amounts dedicated by the at least one computing node of the plurality of computing nodes;

a tracking component to log advertisement data requests; and

a reputation component to authenticate the advertisement data and reports node engaging in fraudulent activity.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the advertisement data includes audio and video content.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the peer-peer network is a cascade cluster of computing nodes.

12. The system according to claim 9, wherein billing and accounting components are executed on a central computing node.