Providing offers and associated location information

• US 10,535,083 B2
• Filed: 10/17/2014
• Issued: 01/14/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Retailmenot Incorporated (J2 Global, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Retailmenot Incorporated (J2 Global, Inc.)
• Inventors: Georgoff, Michael Thomas, Showers, Brian Keith, Throndson, Scott Jason
• Primary Examiner(s): Long, Meredith A
• Application Number:
  US14/517,195
• Publication Number:
  US 20150112774A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,915 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0273 Determination of fees for advertising

Abstract

Provided is a process, including: obtaining a coupon issued by a merchant, the coupon being redeemable in-store, at a physical location of the merchant; obtaining one or more merchant location identifiers, the coupon only being redeemable at one or more merchant locations identified by the one or more merchant location identifiers; sending the coupon and the merchant location identifiers to publishers for presentation to consumers by the publishers on user devices of the consumers; and receiving indications from the user devices of the consumers that the consumers interacted with the coupon, the indications indicating a consumer selection of an in-store redemption option.

Claims

1. An affiliate-network system configured to act as an intermediary between merchants issuing coupons or other offers and online publishers promoting the offers to consumers, the affiliate-network system being configured to distribute and track usage of both on-line offers and in-store offers, the system comprising:

one or more processors;

non-transitory tangible computer-readable memory storing instructions that when executed by one or more of the one or more processors effectuate operations comprising;

obtaining a coupon issued by a merchant, the coupon being redeemable both in-store, at a physical location of the merchant, and online, at a web site of the merchant, the coupon being obtained as a digital record describing terms of the coupon;

obtaining one or more merchant location identifiers associated with the coupon, the merchant location identifiers designating respective geographic areas where the coupon is to be presented to consumers based on the consumers indicating that they are located in the respective geographic areas;

forming, for the coupon, for each of a plurality of online coupon publishers, a coupon-and-publisher-specific uniform resource identifier (URI) that uniquely identifies the respective publisher and the coupon such that a plurality of different coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs are formed for the plurality of publishers;

sending the coupon, the merchant location identifiers, and the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs to publishers for presentation to consumers by the publishers on user devices of the consumers, wherein different coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs, corresponding to the different respective publishers, are sent to the different respective publishers among the plurality of publishers;

receiving a first one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs in a transport protocol first message from a first user device of a first consumer;

accessing a first coupon display template corresponding to a first publisher corresponding to the first one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs;

sending instructions to the first user device to display a first presentation of the coupon that is customized according to the accessed first coupon display template;

receiving, from the first user device, a selection of an in-store redemption option and, in response effectuating operations comprising;

based on having received the first one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs, attributing in memory an in-store redemption of the coupon to the first publisher corresponding to the first one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs, the attribution being associated with at least one of the merchant location identifiers, and

sending the first consumer redemption data documenting that the first consumer is in possession of the coupon for in-store presentation to the merchant at a geographic merchant location;

receiving a second, different one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs in a transport protocol second message from a second user device of a second consumer;

accessing a second coupon display template corresponding to a second publisher corresponding to the second one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs;

sending instructions to the second user device to display a second presentation of the coupon that is customized according to the accessed second coupon display template, wherein the first presentation is visually different from the second presentation such that the first and second presentations are customized to distinguish the first and second publishers even though the instructions to display the presentations being sent from the same computer system and the presentations being of the same coupon;

receiving, from the second user device, a selection of an online redemption option and, in response effectuating operations comprising;

based on having received the second one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs, attributing in memory an online redemption of the coupon to the second publisher corresponding to the second one of the coupon-and-publisher-specific URIs, and

sending a redirect command to the second user device, the redirect command instructing the second user device to automatically request and display webpage content from a website of the merchant.

2. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein:

sending the first consumer redemption data comprises;

sending data identifying the first publisher that presented the coupon to the given consumer to credit first publisher;

the one or more processors effectuate operations comprising;

receiving, after sending the first consumer redemption data, a report from the merchant including the data identifying the first publisher in association with a transaction in which the first consumer presented the redemption data to the merchant; and

attributing in memory the in-store redemption of the coupon to the first publisher is based on the report including the data identifying the first publisher in association with the transaction.

3. The affiliate-network system of claim 2, wherein the merchant location identifiers correspond to merchant geographic locations of merchant stores and attributing in memory the in-store redemption comprises:

receiving transaction data from the merchant indicating that the given consumer redeemed the coupon at a select merchant geographic location corresponding to one of the one or more merchant locations, the transaction data indicating a total amount paid for the transaction, wherein the transaction is one in which only a subset of a group of items or services in the transaction was discounted by the coupon; and

determining compensation for the first publisher based on the total amount paid.

4. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein:

sending the coupon to the first publisher comprises sending a location-and-publisher-and-coupon specific uniform resource identifier (URI) of the coupon and the publisher, the URI including at least one of the merchant location identifiers.

5. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein the in-store redemption option includes a delivery option to print the coupon, a delivery option to send a network address of a presentation of the coupon via text message, and a delivery option to email a network address of a presentation of the coupon, and wherein sending the first consumer redemption data comprises:

receiving a delivery option selection from the first user device to send the network address of the presentation of the coupon via text message; and

accessing an phone number associated with the first consumer stored in a user profile of the first consumer;

sending, to the phone number, a redemption URI;

receiving, from a mobile device associated with the phone number, the mobile device being a different device from the first user device, a message including the redemption URI; and

sending the presentation of the coupon mobile device.

6. The affiliate network system of claim 1, wherein sending the coupon to publishers comprises:

receiving a request from a publisher among the plurality of publishers for coupons, the request including location criteria specifying geographic areas;

determining that one or more merchant locations associated with the coupon match the location criteria; and

in response to the determination, sending the coupon to the publisher from which the request was received.

7. The affiliate-network system of claim 6, wherein the location criteria comprise a geographic area defined by a radius around a location of the consumer user device.

8. The affiliate-network system of claim 6, the memory storing instructions that when executed by one or more of the one or more processors effectuate operations comprising:

receiving, from the merchant, a plurality of merchant locations

determining a merchant location identifier for each of the plurality of merchant locations; and

storing the merchant location identifiers in a merchant data store.

9. The affiliate-network system of claim 8, wherein the merchant location identifier comprises geographic coordinates.

10. The affiliate-network system of claim 8, comprising receiving, from the merchant, location attributes for one of the plurality of merchant locations.