Providing Offers and Associated Location Information

• US 20150112774A1
• Filed: 10/17/2014
• Published: 04/23/2015
• 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
• Granted Patent: US 10,535,083 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.1
• 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 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 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; and

sending the coupon and the merchant location identifiers to publishers for presentation to consumers by the publishers on user devices of the consumers.

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

after an indication that a given consumer has selected an in-store redemption offer, effectuating operations comprising;

sending the given consumer redemption data documenting that the given consumer is in possession of the coupon for presentation to the merchant at the one or more merchant locations, the data identifying a first publisher that presented the coupon to the given consumer to credit first publisher.

3. The affiliate-network system of claim 2, comprising:

after the indication that a given consumer has selected an in-store redemption offer, effectuating operations further comprising;

receiving transaction data from the merchant indicating that the given consumer redeemed the coupon at a select merchant location of the one or more merchant locations; and

determining compensation for the first publisher based on the transaction data.

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

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

5. The affiliate-network system of claim 1, wherein the in-store redemption option includes an option to print the coupon, an option to send a network address of a presentation of the coupon via text message, and an option to email a network address of a presentation of the coupon.

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

receiving a request from a publisher for coupons, the request including location criteria;

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.

11. A method, comprising:

obtaining a plurality of offers from merchants, the offers including offer location data, the offer location data comprising one or more merchant locations, one or more designated market areas, or a combination thereof;

determining a first set of the plurality of offers responsive to a request from a publisher and location criteria;

sending information about the offers to a publisher in response to the request, the information including the offer location data;

tracking, with one or more processors, usage of the offers by consumers;

allocating credit for usage of the offers by consumers to the publisher based on the tracking; and

sending information about the allocation of credit to merchants and the publisher.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the location criteria comprises a geographic area or a designated market area.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the offer location data further comprises a distance threshold defining a permissible distance from a location.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein sending information about the offers to a plurality of publishers comprises:

for each offer, sending the publisher information specifying a respective uniform resource identifier (URI) of the respective offer, such that the publisher has a publisher-specific URI for each offer to be included in content provided by the publisher to consumers, the publisher-specific URI including the offer location data.

15. A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to effectuate operations comprising:

obtaining a plurality of offers from merchants, the offers including offer location data, the offer location data comprising one or more merchant locations, one or more designated market areas, or a combination thereof;

determining a first set of the plurality of offers responsive to a request from a publisher and location criteria;

sending information about the offers to a publisher in response to the request, the information including the offer location data;

tracking, with one or more processors, usage of the offers by consumers;

allocating credit for usage of the offers by consumers to the publisher based on the tracking; and

sending information about the allocation of credit to merchants and the publisher.

16. A method, comprising:

obtaining a location of a consumer user device;

determining location criteria based on the location of the consumer user device;

sending a request for offers and the location criteria to an affiliate-network system;

obtaining a set of offers and offer location data responsive to the request and the location criteria; and

sending a plurality of uniform resource identifiers (URI'"'"'s) corresponding to the set of offers to the consumer user device in response to request.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the location criteria comprises a geographic area or a designated market area.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the geographic area is defined by a geographic radius around the consumer user device location.

19. The method of claim 16, comprising, prior to determining location criteria based on the location of the consumer user device, receiving a request for offers from the consumer user device

20. The method of claim 16, comprising, prior to determining location criteria based on the location of the consumer user device, initiating an offer push to the consumer user device.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the offer location data comprises a merchant location associated with each respective offer, the merchant location identifying where the offer is redeemable.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein the offer location data comprises a designated market area associated with each respective offer.

23. A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to effectuate operations comprising:

obtaining a location of a consumer user device;

determining location criteria based on the location of the consumer user device;

sending a request for offers and the location criteria to an affiliate-network system;

obtaining a set of offers and offer location data responsive to the request and the location criteria; and

sending a plurality of uniform resource identifiers (URI'"'"'s) corresponding to the set of offers to the consumer user device in response to request.