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Methods and apparatuses to provide application programming interface for retrieving pay per call advertisements

  • US 9,202,220 B2
  • Filed: 11/27/2006
  • Issued: 12/01/2015
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/06/2003
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method, comprising:

  • processing, by a web services server, a request according to an application program interface allowing a client application of a demand partner to communicate through the application programming interface with a server application of the web services server over a communication connection, wherein;

    the request is received from the client application of the demand partner on behalf of a customer and the request comprises i) a keyword specified by the customer and ii) a category specified by the client application of the demand partner; and

    the application programming interface allows the client application of the demand partner to invoke a set of one or more callable methods to access the server application according to a predefined data interface and to retrieve a set of advertisements from an advertisement database hosed on a database server in communication with the web services server;

    wherein the processing the request according to the application program interface results in at least one method from the set of one or more callable methods being invoked;

    based at least in part at least one method invoked from the set of one or more callable methods, searching, by an advertisement server in communication with the database server, the advertisement database hosted on the database server according to the request to identify an advertisement, wherein searching the advertisement database comprises automatically searching for cross selling and/or pitch switching based on a directory assistance request of the customer and filtering out advertisements according to a parameter specified by the client application;

    consequent to the identifying the advertisement, allocating, by a reference allocation server, a real-time communication reference used to communicate with an advertiser to the advertisement; and

    transmitting, by the web services server to the client application, at least a portion of the advertisement according to the application programming interface, the advertisement including the real-time communication reference used to communicate with the advertiser, wherein the advertiser is billed a predetermined fee for the advertisement in response to an initiation of a communication connected to the advertiser via the real-time communication reference, the communication connected based at least in part on a Voice over Internet Protocol connection.

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