Employment of task framework for advertising

• US 20070130124A1
• Filed: 12/05/2005
• Published: 06/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/05/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Katariya, Sanjeev, Ramsey, William
• Granted Patent: US 7,831,585 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• 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 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

A task-based advertisement system and method are provided. The system employs high-order concepts (e.g., booking a flight, checking stock quotes etc.) embodied in “task(s)” which can then be bid upon by advertisers. The task(s) employed by the system are based upon a semantic solution to a natural-language query. The system includes a search engine that is capable of serving content in response to user query(ies). The system further includes a task server that can include hardware and/or software to retrieve task(s) in response to user query(ies). The task(s) retrieved by the task server can be presented to advertiser(s) who can bid on the task(s).

Claims

1. A task-based advertisement system, comprising:

a search engine that receives a query from a user; and

,

a task server that provides at least one task in response to the query provided from the search engine, the search engine provides information associated with the retrieved task to an advertiser that can bid on the task.

2. The system of claim 1, the search engine is an Internet search engine.

3. The system of claim 1, the query is a natural language query.

4. The system of claim 1, the search engine further provides a targeted advertisement to the user in response to the query based on information received from the advertiser.

5. The system of claim 1, the bid represents a monetary amount to be paid in the event the search engine provides the user with an advertisement associated with the advertiser.

6. The system of claim 1, the task comprising a name, a title, a description and a keyword.

7. The system of claim 6, the task further comprising at least one of a keyword, a slot and an entity, values of which are provided by the task server based, at least in part, upon the query.

8. The system of claim 1, the task server further receives click-through information regarding a user'"'"'s selection of an advertisement, the task server employs the click-through information to update a query classifier model.

9. The system of claim 1, the task server further receives information regarding a user web action which the task server employs to update a slot-filling model.

10. The system of claim 1, the advertiser provides information regarding an advertisement that is to be provided to the user in the event that the advertiser is a successful bidder on the task.

11. The system of claim 10, the information comprising an identifier employed by the search engine to locate the advertisement, the advertisement accessible by the search engine.

12. The system of claim 10, the information comprising dynamic advertisement information.

13. The system of claim 1, the task comprising an XML packet which is sent to the advertiser by the search engine.

14. The system of claim 1, the bid comprising an HTML data packet.

15. A search engine method, comprising:

receiving a query from a user;

providing the query to a task server;

receiving task results from the task server; and

,

providing the task results to advertisers for bidding.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

receiving bids from at least some of the advertisers;

retrieving information regarding advertisements to be displayed to the user; and

,

providing advertisements and search results to the user.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

obtaining click-through information from the user;

logging the click-through information; and

,

providing click-through information to the task server.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

receiving information regarding a user web action;

logging the user web action; and

,

providing information regarding the user web action to the task server.

19. An advertiser method, comprising:

receiving task results from a search engine; and

,

providing bid information associated with the task results.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

providing information associated with a user web action to the search engine.