Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage

• US 9,779,415 B2
• Filed: 09/14/2012
• Issued: 10/03/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/02/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Excalibur IP, LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Inventors: McElfresh, Charles, Mineiro, Paul, Radford, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Abrahamson, Amanda
• Assistant Examiner(s): Stibley, Michael
• Application Number:
  US13/617,647
• Publication Number:
  US 20130047076A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,845 Days
• Field of Search: 705 14
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0243 Comparative campaigns
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0244 Optimization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0246 Traffic
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0247 Calculate past, present or future revenues
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0254 based on statistics
• 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 30/0273 Determination of fees for advertising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

A method and system for placement of graphical objects on a page to optimize the occurrence of an event associated with such objects. The graphical objects might include, for instance, advertisements on a webpage, and the event would include a user clicking on that ad. The page includes positions for receipt of the object material. Data regarding the past performance of the objects is stored and updated as new data is received. A user requests a page from a server associated with system. The server uses the performance data to derive a prioritized arrangement of the objects on the page. The objects are arranged according to a calculation and returned to the user on the requested page.

Claims

1. A media system accessible over a network, the media system comprising:

a user interface circuit implemented by a server computer and accessible by a plurality of user computers operated by a plurality of users over the network and operative to respond to user requests for web pages, the user requests received at the user interface circuit over the network from respective user computers of the plurality of user computers, and the user interface circuit further operative to provide information for web pages to be provided to the respective user computers of the plurality of users, the server computer programmed with an advertisement placement function operative to

retrieve stored past performance information collected by the media system about respective advertisements when the respective advertisements were previously arranged on web pages in response to previous received user requests, the past performance information being indicative of user response to the respective advertisements when the respective advertisements were previously arranged on web pages and provided to user computers, and

arrange a plurality of advertisements on the provided web pages based on the past performance information for the plurality of advertisements;

an ad performance database in data communication with the server computer to store the past performance information for the advertisements; and

an ad performance interface circuit implemented by a server computer and in data communication with the ad performance database, the ad performance interface circuit being accessible over the network by an advertiser computer operated by an advertiser, the ad performance interface circuit operative to receive performance monitoring requests from an advertiser computer operated by an advertiser and in response to a received performance monitoring request to provide advertisement performance information to the advertiser.

2. The media system of claim 1 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is operative to provide advertisement performance data about advertisements placed by the advertiser.

3. The media system of claim 1 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is operative to provide advertisement performance tracking information about advertisements placed by the advertiser.

4. The media system of claim 1 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is in data communication with the ad performance database and is operative to collect performance statistical data from the ad performance database and to present information about performance to the advertiser.

5. The media system of claim 4 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is operative to retrieve user demographic information from the ad performance database and provide to the advertiser performance data based on the user demographic information.

6. The media system of claim 1 further comprising:

a log database;

a recognizer in data communication with the user interface circuit and the log database, the recognizer operative to recognize user information associated with respective users, the recognizer further operative to assign a unique user identifier to respective users and to store the user information in the log database in association with the user identifier; and

a log digester in data communication with the log database and operative to process stored user information in the log database to update the past performance information stored in the ad performance database.

7. The media system of claim 6 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is operative to provide to the advertiser demographic information about users based on the stored user information in the log database and the stored past performance information in the ad performance database.

8. A computer implemented method comprising:

receiving at a server requests for advertisements to place on a web page requested by users, the requests received at the server system from a computer system providing the web page requested by the users;

at the server, collecting user information about the users;

at the server, storing past performance data in a memory circuit forming an ad performance database, the past performance data being collected by the server about advertisements when the advertisements were previously provided to web pages in response to previous received user requests for web pages, the past performance data being indicative of previous user responses to the advertisements when the advertisements were previously provided to web pages and provided to user computers;

in response to the received requests for advertisements, retrieving from the ad performance database past performance data for the requested advertisements;

providing, to the computer system providing the web page, from the server, data defining a plurality of advertisements for the web page, the plurality of advertisements arranged relative to one another on the web page using past performance data retrieved from the ad performance database;

at the server, tracking subsequent performance of the plurality of advertisements and storing information about the tracked performance in the ad performance database, the stored information about the tracked performance being indicative of user responses to the plurality of advertisements when the plurality of advertisements was provided on the web page and provided to a user computer;

receiving at the server from an advertiser computer operated by an advertiser a request for advertiser analytic information about the tracked performance of advertisements associated with the advertiser and provided on web pages to user computers; and

providing, over a network to the computer operated by the advertiser, advertiser analytic information about the tracked performance of advertisements associated with the advertiser.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

at the server, providing an ad provider interface circuit accessible over the network by the advertiser to view the advertiser analytic information.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising providing through the ad provider interface circuit user demographic information about the users requesting web pages.

11. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

based on the collected user information and based on targeting information provided by the advertiser through the ad provider interface circuit, selecting particular advertisements to provide to particular users among the plurality of advertisements.

12. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

based on the collected user information and based on pricing information provided by the advertiser through the ad provider interface circuit, selecting particular advertisements to provide to users among the plurality of advertisements.

13. A computer for optimizing placement of advertisements on a web page, the computer comprising:

a server coupled to a network to receive requests from a computer-implemented web site for web pages including the web page to be shown;

memory defining an ad placement database in data communication with the server to store data defining advertisements to be placed on web pages, the data defining the advertisements being associated with advertisers who may access the computer system from advertiser computers over a network;

memory defining a log file coupled to the server to store data about past advertisement performance, the data about past advertisement performance being collected when respective advertisements were placed on web pages and being indicative of user response to the respective advertisements;

memory defining an ad performance database in data communication with the server and configured to store performance statistical data about past performance of respective advertisements when the respective advertisements were shown to users viewing web pages including the respective advertisements;

wherein the server is programmed to obtain performance statistical data from the ad performance database for a plurality of advertisements and programmed to determine a probability for a respective advertisement of the plurality of advertisements that a user will invoke a link associated with an advertisement shown to the user, the server further programmed to rank the plurality of advertisements based in part on the determined probability, the server system further programmed to provide to a web site at least some of the ranked advertisements arranged relative to one another on the web page to be shown in order as a function of the ranking; and

an ad performance interface circuit in data communication with the ad performance database and accessible by an advertiser computer operated by an advertiser over a network to provide to the advertiser advertisement performance information.

14. The computer of claim 13 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is operative to provide advertisement performance data about advertisements associated with the advertiser.

15. The computer of claim 13 wherein the server is programmed to determine data about past advertisement clickthrough percentages based on the obtained performance statistical data from the ad performance database.

16. The computer of claim 15 wherein the server system is programmed to rank the plurality of advertisements according to an associated cost per click for a respective advertisement multiplied by a clickthrough-percentage.

17. The computer of claim 13 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is programmed to collect performance statistical data from the ad performance database and to provide advertisement performance tracking information about advertisements placed by the advertiser and, based on the collected performance statistical data, provide to the advertiser viewable data regarding the advertisements placed by the user.

18. The computer of claim 13 wherein the ad performance interface circuit is programmed to provide to the advertiser demographic profiles of viewers of the advertisements placed by the user.

19. The computer of claim 13 further comprising an ad placement interface circuit in data communication with the ad placement database, the ad placement interface circuit being accessible by the advertiser over a network to guide the advertiser through steps to create and upload a new advertisement into the ad placement database.

20. The computer of claim 13 wherein the ad placement database stores information about constraints on positions on web pages where the advertisements may be placed.