Method and apparatus for customization of information content provided to a requestor over a network using anonymous demographic data stored on a demographic server
First Claim
1. A system for delivering customized web pages to users, said system comprising:
- a computer associated with a user;
a demographic server that stores demographic information; and
at least one content server that stores content for at least one web page;
wherein said content server receives a request for a web page from the computer, wherein the request for a web page includes a request for the demographic information, wherein said demographic information comprises anonymous demographic data, wherein the anonymous demographic data is selected from a group consisting of gender, marital status, age, salary, number of children, job type, residence location, political affiliation, hobbies, preferred greeting name, interests, and user preferences, wherein the content server customizes the content of the requested web page based on the anonymous demographic data, and wherein said content server delivers the customized web page to the computer associated with the user.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Improved techniques for customizing information provided from a content server through a network to a user of a computer system in accordance with demographic classifications, user interests, or preferences are disclosed. Such customizing can involve banner advertising on the Internet whereby the advertising banners are able to be targeted to the user. The customizing can also involve altering portions of a web page to be displayed to the user so that the web page is more effective, useful or desirable for the user. Besides customization of the information to be displayed to the user, the invention also provides techniques for obtaining demographic information about the user of the computer system, and techniques for transmitting the demographic information over the network so that remote content servers that provide information content to the user can do so with knowledge of the demographic information about the user.
88 Citations
21 Claims
-
1. A system for delivering customized web pages to users, said system comprising:
-
a computer associated with a user; a demographic server that stores demographic information; and at least one content server that stores content for at least one web page; wherein said content server receives a request for a web page from the computer, wherein the request for a web page includes a request for the demographic information, wherein said demographic information comprises anonymous demographic data, wherein the anonymous demographic data is selected from a group consisting of gender, marital status, age, salary, number of children, job type, residence location, political affiliation, hobbies, preferred greeting name, interests, and user preferences, wherein the content server customizes the content of the requested web page based on the anonymous demographic data, and wherein said content server delivers the customized web page to the computer associated with the user. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10)
-
-
2. A computer-implemented method for customizing web pages provided over a network comprising:
-
(a) receiving, at a server computer, a web page request issued by a requester over the network from a requestor'"'"'s computer, wherein the page request includes a demographic identifier; (b) retrieving demographic information identified by the demographic identifier from a demographics server, wherein the demographic information comprises anonymous demographic data, wherein the anonymous demographic data is selected from a group consisting of gender, marital status, age, salary, number of children, job type, residence location, political affiliation, hobbies, preferred greeting name, interests, and user preferences; and (c) in response to the web page request, customizing a web page to be displayed on the requestor'"'"'s computer based on the anonymous demographic data. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6)
-
-
11. A system for delivering customized web pages to users, said system comprising:
-
a computer, associated with a user; a demographic server, wherein the demographic server stores demographic information comprising anonymous demographic data, wherein the anonymous demographic data is selected from a group consisting of gender, marital status, age, salary, number of children, job type, residence location, political affiliation, hobbies, preferred greeting name, interests, and user preferences; and at least one content server that stores content for at least one web page, wherein said at least one content server receives a request for a web page from the computer, wherein the request for a web page includes a demographic identifier that identifies the anonymous demographic data, and wherein said content server delivers a customized web page to the computer associated with the user. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
-
-
19. A computer-implemented method for utilizing demographic information over a network of computers, said method comprising:
-
storing the demographic information on a demographics server, wherein the demographic information comprises anonymous demographic data, wherein the anonymous demographic data is selected from a group consisting of gender, marital status, age, salary, number of children, job type, residence location, political affiliation, hobbies, preferred greeting name, interests, and user preferences; storing a demographic identifier on a computer associated with a user, wherein the demographic identifier identifies the anonymous demographic data; issuing a request from the user to receive a web page from a content server via the network, the request including the demographic identifier corresponding to the user; and retrieving the demographic information identified by the demographic identifier via the network from the demographics server. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21)
-
Specification