Automatic mass scale online promotion testing

• US 10,636,052 B2
• Filed: 06/21/2014
• Issued: 04/28/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 03/13/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Maplebear Inc.
• Original Assignee: Eversight, Inc. (Maplebear Inc.)
• Inventors: Moran, David, Montero, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Andrei, Radu
• Application Number:
  US14/311,250
• Publication Number:
  US 20160371719A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,138 Days
• Field of Search: 705 14
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0242 Determining effectiveness of advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0244 Optimization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/0064 Geometric transfor invariant watermarking, e.g. affine transform invariant
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/41415 involving a public display, viewable by several users in a public space outside their home, e.g. movie theatre, information kiosk

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for implementing automated online promotion testing in an efficient and platform-agnostic manner are disclosed. A test management module interacts with a concept generator module, a promotion analytics module, and agnostically interacts with promotion administering platforms to automatically generate, administer, and analyze a large number of test promotions to online consumers in a manner that minimizes labor-intensive changes to the promotion administering platforms.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for adapting test promotions to promotion interfaces that is performed by a promotion optimization system, containing a promotion module, an administration module, a validation module and a monitoring module, the method, comprising:

receiving a plurality of files, wherein each file is requirements specific to a platform of a plurality of platforms;

generating various combinations of variable values for a promotion campaign;

receiving a subset of platforms from the plurality of platforms upon which a plurality of test promotions will be displayed;

filtering the various combinations of variable values by type of product offered compared against the variable values of brand, quantity and packaging to generate a product validation set of variable values as a subset of the various combinations of variable values;

filtering the product validation set of variable values by discount rules to remove variable values discounting the product more than a set threshold to generate a discount validated set of variable values as a subset of the product validation set of variable values;

validating the discount validated set of variable values by the platform requirements from the associated file to filter out non-compliant values that do not meet the requirements, wherein remaining values after the non-compliant values are removed are validated variable value combinations;

generating the plurality of test promotions using the validated variable value combinations; and

adapting the plurality of test promotions for the subset of platforms using the platform requirements; and

administering the plurality of test promotions to a plurality of segmented subpopulations of consumers in a real-time, wherein the real-time administration of test promotions includes concurrent testing of the plurality of test promotions by adapting the generated plurality of test promotions to the subset of platforms using the associated files, wherein the adapting includes matching platform transport requirements, relocating text and image elements to match platform requirements, formatting requirements, and publishing requirements.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the generation of various combinations includes utilizing a user selected offer template.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the template includes a promotional theme and layout options.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the template includes fields for manual entry of variable values.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the product requirements include ensuring combinations of the product, brand, packaging and quantity exist.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the discount requirements include rules preventing a discount larger than a set threshold, and that the discount does not result in a loss for a seller.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the platform requirements include layout, graphic size, color, and character count.