CN1759388A - Serving advertisements based on content by client terminal device - Google Patents

Abstract

A client-side application (such as a browser, a browser plug-in, a browser toolbar plug-in, etc. on an end user's computer) is used to support the serving of content-relevant ads to the client device. The client-side application may provide such support by sending document information (such as a document identifier, document content, content relevance information, etc.) to a content ad server. The client-side application may also be used to combine content of the document and the content-relevant ads. For example, the client-side application may combine content of the document and the ads in a window (e.g., in a browser window), may provide the ads in a window above, below, adjacent to a document window, may provide the ads in ''chrome'' of the browser, etc.

Description

Use client device support to serve contextually relevant ads

§0. Related applications

This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 10/375,900 (herein incorporated by reference), entitled "Serving Advertisements Based On Content," filed February 26, 2003, and the inventor listed is: Darrell Anderson , Paul Bucheit, Alex Carobus, Claire Cui, Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Deepak Jindal, and Narayanan Shivakumar; and, the above-mentioned U.S. application is also a continuation-in-part of U.S. Patent Application No. 10/314,427 (hereby incorporated by reference) , entitled "Methods and Apparatus for Serving Relevant Advertisements," filed December 6, 2002, inventors Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Paul Bucheit, this application claims U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/413,536 (incorporated herein For reference), the provisional application titled "Methods and Apparatus for Serving Relevant Advertisements" was submitted on September 24, 2002, and the inventors were Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, and Paul Bucheit.

This application is also a continuation-in-part of U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 10/453,909 (herein incorporated by reference), entitled "Proactive Syndication for the Serving of Advertisements," filed June 3, 2003, and the listed inventors are Krishna Bharat, Gokul Rajaran, Marshall Spight and Shivakumar.

§1. Background of the invention

§1.1 Field of Invention

The present invention relates to advertising. In particular, the invention relates to expanding the opportunities for advertisers to target their advertisements.

§1.2 Background technology

Advertising is already familiar using traditional media such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, despite being able to conduct demographic research and perfectly legitimate identification of typical audiences for various media outputs, advertisers still realize that much of their advertising budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.

Recently, advertising through more interactive media has become common. For example, as the number of users using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have realized that media and services offered over the Internet will be a potentially powerful avenue for advertising.

In an attempt to maximize the value of such advertising, advertisers have developed several strategies. In one strategy, advertisers use mass media or means (without loss of generality, referred to in this specification as "websites") that provide interactive media or services as a channel to reach a large audience. Using this first method, an advertiser could place an ad, for example, on the home page of the New York Times website or the USA Today website. In another tactic, an advertiser can try to target its ad to a small, appropriate audience, thereby increasing the chances of a positive response from the audience. For example, an agency promoting tours in the Costa Rican rainforest could place an ad in the ecotourism subdirectory of the Yahoo! (Yahoo!) website.

Regardless of the strategy, website-based advertising (also referred to as "website advertising") is generally presented to its advertising audience in the form of a "banner" (ie, a square box that may contain an image component). When a member of the advertising audience (referred to, without loss of generality, in this specification as an "audience" or "user") selects one of these banners by clicking on it, the embedded hypertext link typically links the audience to Links to advertisers' websites. This process in which a viewer selects an ad is collectively referred to as "click through" ("click through" being used to encompass any user selection).

Advertisers can use many measurable or identifiable behaviors of users, such as click-throughs, click-through rates, conversions, conversion rates, etc., to judge the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number of ad impressions (the number of times the ad is displayed) is collectively referred to as the ad's "click-through rate."

A "conversion" occurs when a user completes a transaction related to a previously served ad. Transformation constituents may vary between situations and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an ad, is directed to the advertiser's web page, and completes a transaction there before leaving the web page. Alternatively, a conversion may be defined as a user seeing an ad and making a purchase on the advertiser's webpage within a predetermined period of time (eg, 7 days). In another way, a conversion can also be defined by an advertiser as any measurable/observable user action, such as downloading a whitepage, navigating a website at least to a certain depth, viewing at least a certain number of pages, Spend at least a predetermined amount of time on it, etc. While the user actions that constitute a conversion are not limited to this, often times, if user actions do not indicate a completed transaction, they may indicate a sales harbinger. Of course, many other definitions of transformed constituents are also possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of ad impressions (ie, the number of times an ad is displayed) is collectively referred to as the conversion rate. If conversions are defined as being able to occur within a predetermined time from serving an ad, one possible definition of the conversion rate may only consider ads that have been served outside of the past predetermined time.

Despite the initial promise of website-based advertising, several problems remain with existing approaches. While advertisers are able to reach large segments of their audiences, they are often dissatisfied with the return on their advertising investment.

Similarly, hosts of websites that present advertisements (referred to simply as "website hosts" or "ad consumers") face the challenge of maximizing advertising revenue without compromising their users' experience. Some web hosts have chosen to prioritize advertising revenue over user interests. "Overture.com" is one such site that provides a so-called "search engine" service that returns advertisements masquerading as "search results" in response to user queries. Overture.com allows advertisers to pay to place ads for their sites (or targeted sites) higher up the so-called search results list. If a scheme were implemented in which advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad (ie, cost-per-click), advertisers would lose incentive to effectively target their ads because poorly targeted ads Will not be clicked and therefore will not ask for payment. So, ads with a high cost-per-click will appear at or near the top, but won't necessarily generate real revenue for the publisher because viewers aren't clicking on them. Also, ads that viewers are willing to click are further down the list, or not appearing at all, so the relevance of the ad is compromised.

Search engines, such as Google, have enabled advertisers to target their advertisements so that these advertisements can be presented in conjunction with the search results pages generated by queries. While search results pages give advertisers a greater opportunity to target their advertisements to a more receptive audience, search results pages are only a fraction of page views on the World Wide Web ("the Web" for short).

Existing client-side adware systems, such as those used by Gator Corporation of Redwood City, California, are capable of displaying advertisements on a user's browser or on a user's desktop in response to the page being viewed, without the content owner's awareness or awareness. participate. Such a system may need to be present on the client's (end user's) computer, and often requires the end user's permission. In the Gator system, advertisements can be targeted to users using: (i) demographic and lifestyle profiles; (ii) behavioral targeting (this allows targeted, customized messages to be displayed on users' computer screens based on their personal online behavior above); (iii) historical targeting (which allows targeted, customized advertisements to be displayed on a user's computer screen based on past behavior); and (iv) tag-a-long targeting (which allows His online behavior has shown some interest but also many impressions of the user's computer screen with targeted, tailored messages). Unfortunately, while a user's past behavior is often a useful metric for determining what advertisements should be served to the user, such past behavior may not be indicative of the user's current interests. Also, if more than one person (such as different members of a family) uses the same computer and browser to access the Internet, it can be difficult to track a given user's past behavior. Additionally, tracking a user's online habits can raise subtle user privacy concerns. Also, if such past behavior by the user is stored locally on the user's computer, it may consume required storage resources.

Therefore, there is a need to take fuller advantage of advertising opportunities on websites. Doing so should help ad providers to display more ads and enhance end-user experience by serving relevant ads.

§2. Contents of the invention

Client applications (eg, browsers on end-user computers, browser plug-ins, browser toolbar plug-ins, etc.) are used to support the provision of content-related advertisements to client devices. Client applications may provide this support by sending document information (eg, document identifiers, document content, content-related information, etc.) to a contextual advertisement server (referred to as a "content advertisement server" or "CAS").

Client applications can also be used to combine document content and contextual advertisements. For example, a client application may combine document content and advertisements in a window (e.g., in a browser window), with an upper window (e.g., a "pop-up" window), a lower window (e.g., a "pop-in ad") ), or adjacent to the document window, the advertisement may be provided in the browser "chrome", and the like.

§3. Description of drawings

Figure 1 is a high-level schematic diagram showing the parts or entities capable of interacting with an advertising system.

Figure 2 is a schematic circle diagram of an exemplary advertising environment in which the present invention may operate.

Figure 3 illustrates an advertising environment in which advertisers can target their advertisements on search results pages generated by search engines and/or documents served by content servers.

FIG. 4 is a schematic circle diagram of operations in accordance with the present invention that may be used in an online advertising environment such as that shown in FIG. 2 .

5 and 6 are messaging diagrams illustrating the operation of various exemplary embodiments of the present invention.

Figure 7 is a high-level block diagram of an apparatus that may be used to perform at least some of various operations and generate and/or store information in a manner consistent with the present invention.

Figure 8 illustrates a screen generated using an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

§4. Specific implementation

The present invention relates to novel methods, apparatus, message formats and/or data structures for facilitating the provision of content-related advertisements using client applications. The following description is set forth to enable any person of ordinary skill in the art to make or use the invention, and is provided in the context of specific applications and their requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, and the general principles set forth below may be applied to other embodiments and applications. Accordingly, it is not intended that the invention be limited to the embodiments shown, and the inventors regard their invention as any patentable subject matter described.

Below, the environment in which the present invention can operate is described in §4.1. Exemplary embodiments of the invention are then described in §4.2. Finally, some conclusions about the invention are stated in §4.3.

§4.1 The environment in which the present invention can operate

§4.1.1 Exemplary advertising environment

Figure 1 is a high-level schematic diagram of an advertising environment. The environment may include an advertisement entry, maintenance and delivery system 120 . Advertisers 110 may directly or indirectly enter, maintain and track advertising information in system 120 . These advertisements may be in the form of graphic advertisements such as so-called banner advertisements, plain text advertisements, image advertisements, audio advertisements, video advertisements and combinations of any one or more of these elements. Advertisements may also include embedded information, such as links, and/or machine-executable instructions. Ad consumers 130 may submit requests to system 120 , receive advertisements from system 120 in response to their requests, and provide usage information to system 120 . Entities other than ad consumers 130 may also initiate requests for advertisements. Although not shown in the figure, other entities may also provide usage information to the system 120 (eg, whether conversions or click-throughs related to advertisements occurred). Such usage information may include measured or observed user behavior in relation to advertisements that have been served.

One example of an advertisement consumer 130 is a general content server that receives requests for documents (eg, articles, discussion threads, music, videos, graphics, search results, web page listings, etc.) and retrieves the requested documents or services in response to the requests. A content server may submit an advertisement request to server 120 . Such an advertisement request may include as many advertisements as desired. The advertisement request may also include document request information. This information may include the document itself (e.g., a page), the category corresponding to the content of the document or document request (e.g., art, business, computer, artistic film, artistic music, etc.), part or all of the document request, the age of the content, the content Type (e.g. text, graphics, video, audio, mixed media, etc.), geographic location information, content subject (e.g., ad safety level, porn filter, family filter, etc.), etc.

The content server may combine the requested document with one or more advertisements provided by system 120 . The combined information, including the content of the document and the advertisement, is then forwarded to the end user requesting the file for presentation to the user. Finally, the content server may share information about the ad and how, when, and/or where the ad was served (e.g., location, click-through or not, impression time, impression date, size, conversion or not, etc.) Passed back to system 120. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to system 120 in some other manner.

The content may be an e-mail message as described in U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 10/452,830, incorporated herein by reference, filed June 2, 2003, entitled "Serving Advertisement Using Information Associated with E- mail” with listed inventors as Jeffery A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, and Paul Bucheit. In this example, the content server could be an email server such as Yahoo Mail or Microsoft Hotmail.

Another example of an advertisement consumer 130 is a search engine. A search engine may receive a search result query. In response, the search engine may retrieve relevant search results (eg, from a web index). Exemplary search engines are described in the article by S. Brin and L. Page, entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine," and U.S. Patent No. 6,285,999 (both of which are incorporated herein by reference), Presented at Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, Australia. These search results may include, for example, a list of web page titles, excerpted text extracted from these web pages, hypertext links to these web pages, and may be organized into a predetermined number (eg, 10) of search results.

A search engine may submit an advertisement request to system 120 . The request can include as many advertisements as desired. This number depends on the search results, the amount of screen or page space the search results take up, the size and shape of the ad, and so on. In one embodiment, the number of desired advertisements will be from 1 to 10, preferably from 3 to 5. Ad requests may also include queries (entered or parsed), query-based information (such as geographic location information, whether the query is from a member, and an identifier for such a member), and/or related to or based on search results Information. Such information may include, for example, an identifier associated with the search result (e.g., a document identifier or "docID"), a score associated with the search result (e.g., information retrieved such as the dot product of feature vectors corresponding to the query and the document ( "IR") score, Page Rank score and/or a combination of IR score and Page Rank score), summary text extracted from a recognized document (e.g., a web page), full text of a recognized document, recognized Document feature vectors, etc.

The search engine may combine the search results with one or more advertisements provided by the system 120 . The combined information, including search results and advertisements, is then forwarded to the user who submitted the search for presentation to the user. Preferably, the search results are kept distinct from the advertisements so that users are not confused between paid advertisements and supposedly neutral search results.

Finally, search engines may combine information about the ad and how, when, and/or where the ad was presented (e.g., location, click-through or not, time of impression, date of impression, size, conversion or not, etc.) Passed back to system 120. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to system 120 in some other manner.

While ad requests can be initiated and/or issued by content servers and search engines, client devices (eg, user computers, personal digital assistants, mobile phones, mobile devices, etc.) can also serve as ad consumers 130 . For example, an application resident on a client device may submit an advertisement request to advertisement system 120 . The request may include information about a document on (or requested by) the client device (eg, a web page on a content-providing application such as a browser, email in an email application, etc.). For example, an advertisement request may include information related to a document, such as content-related information, concepts, topics, and the like. The document information provided in the request may include the content (information) of the document or other information (eg, URL) that allows access to such information.

As can be appreciated from the foregoing, advertisement input, maintenance and delivery system 120 may serve advertisement servers 130, such as content servers, search engines, and client devices. As discussed in §1.2 above, it is known to provide advertisements targeted to search results pages generated by search engines. The invention also allows the provision of advertisements targeted to documents served by the file server. For example, referring to the exemplary environment of FIG. 3 , network or internetwork 360 may include ad server 320 that serves targeted advertisements on search results pages from search engine 332 . Assume that internetwork 360 is the Web. The search engine searches most or all of the content 350 . Portions 334 of the advertising content 350 will include an area of available advertising space (also referred to as "inventory"). More specifically, one or more content servers 336 may include one or more documents 340 . A document may include content, embedded information such as meta-information and machine-executable instructions, and available advertising slot regions. Note that the advertisement inserted into the ad slot area in the document may vary each time the document is served. Alternatively, an ad inserted into an ad slot area may have a static association with a given document. As will be described in more detail below, the ad server may use the results of an individual search for some or all of the content that has the ad slot area 334 available. Even if the document does not include a clearly defined area of available advertising space, it can be determined that the advertisement may be provided within the document, or provided in relation to the document (e.g., over and covering (i.e., obscuring) the content of the document in a pop-up window, in a pop-under window in the background below the document, in a browser's "Chrome" (Chrome), etc.). Ads can partially or completely cover the document, share screen space with the document, occupy the screen space of the document, be partially or completely covered by the document, etc.

§4.1.2 Exemplary Ad Entry, Maintenance and Delivery Environment

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary advertising system 120' through which the present invention may be used. Exemplary advertising system 120 ′ may include inventory system 210 and may store advertising information 205 and usage information 245 . Exemplary advertising system 120' may support information entry and management operations 215, campaign (e.g., targeting) assistance operations 220, billing and billing operations portion 225, ad serving operations 230, relevance determination operations 235, optimization operations 240, Relative presentation attribute assignment (eg, position ranking) operation 250 , fraud detection operation 255 , and results interface operation 260 .

Advertisers 110 may interface with system 120' via information entry and management operations 215 as indicated by interface 216. Ad consumer 130 may interface with system 120' via ad serving operation 230 as indicated by interface 231 . Ad consumer 130 and/or other entities (not shown) may interface with system 120' via results interfacing operation 260 as indicated by interface 261 .

Advertising programs may include information about accounts, campaigns, creatives, targeting, and the like. The term "account" is associated with a given advertiser's information (eg, unique email address, password, billing information, etc.). A "Campaign" or "Campaign" means one or more groups of one or more Advertisements and may include start dates, end dates, budget information, geographic targeting information, syndication information, etc. For example, Honda has one advertising campaign for its automobile business and a separate advertising campaign for its motorcycle business. Its automotive campaign has one or more ad groups, each containing one or more ads. Each ad group can include a set of keywords and a maximum cost (cost per click, cost per conversion, etc.). Alternatively or additionally, each ad group may include an average cost (eg, average cost per click, average cost per conversion, etc.). Therefore, a single maximum cost and/or a single average cost may be associated with one or more keywords. As mentioned, each ad group may have one or more ads or "creatives" (ie, the ad content that is ultimately presented to the end user). Advertisement information 205 can naturally include more or less information and can be organized in many different numbers.

Advertising information 205 may be input and managed via an advertising information input and management operation 215 . Campaign (eg, targeting) assistance operations 220 may be applied to assist advertisers 110 in generating effective advertising campaigns. For example, campaign assistance operation 220 may use information provided by inventory system 210, which can track all possible ad impressions, ad impressions that have been reserved, and ad impressions that are available for a given keyword when using an ad context through a search engine. Advertisement serving operations 230 may service advertisement requests from advertisement consumers 130 . Advertisement Serving Operation 230 may use Relevance Determine Operation 235 to determine candidate advertisements for a given request. Advertisement serving operation 230 may then use optimization operation 240 to select a final set of one or more candidate advertisements. The ad serving operation 230 may then use the relative presentation attribute assignment operation 250 to order the returned ad presentations. Billing/billing operations 225 may be used to track changes related to ad serving and to bill advertisers. Fraud detection operations 255 may be used to reduce fraudulent use (eg, by advertisers) of the advertising system, such as through the use of stolen credit cards. Finally, results interface operation 260 may be used to receive (from ad consumer 130 or some other entity) result information about the actual ad served, such as whether a click-through occurred, whether a conversion occurred (e.g., Whether the sale of the advertised goods or services is started or completed within the scheduled time from the start), etc. Such results information may be received at interface 261 and may include information identifying the ad and the time at which the ad was offered, as well as related results.

§4.1.3 Definition

Online advertising, such as those used in the exemplary systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 , or any other system, may have a variety of inherent features. Such features may be specified by the application and/or the advertiser. In the following, these features are referred to as "advertising features". For example, taking a text advertisement as an example, the characteristics of the advertisement may include a title line, advertisement text, and embedded links. Taking an image advertisement as an example, the characteristics of the advertisement may include images, executable codes, and embedded links. Depending on the type of online advertisement, advertisement features may include one or more of the following: text, links, audio files, video files, image files, executable code, and embedded information.

When serving online advertisements, one or more of the following parameters may be used to describe when, where, and how the advertisements are served. Hereinafter, these parameters are referred to as "provided parameters". For example, serving parameters may include one or more of the following: characteristics of the document used to serve the advertisement (including information related thereto), search queries or search results relevant to the serving of the advertisement, user characteristics (e.g., their geographic location , the language used by the user, the type of browser used, previous page views, previous behavior), the host or affiliate site that initiated the request (e.g., AOL, Google, Yahoo), the advertisement on the page that served it absolute position of the , position (spatial or temporal) relative to other advertisements served, absolute size of the advertisement, size relative to other advertisements, color of the advertisement, number of other advertisements served, type of other advertisements served, The time of day the ad is served, the time of the week the ad is served, the time of the year the ad is served, etc. Naturally, there are other provisioning parameters that can be used in the context of the present invention.

While offering parameters may be non-essential to the characteristics of the advertisement, they are relevant to the advertisement as offering conditions or constraints. When used as provided conditions or constraints, such provided parameters may be referred to simply as "provided constraints" (or "target alignment criteria"). For example, in some systems an advertiser can target the ads he serves by specifying that his ads are only served on weekends, not below a certain location, only to users in certain locations, etc. As another example, in some systems, an advertiser may specify that its advertisements be served only when the page or search query includes certain keywords or phrases. As another example, in some systems, an advertiser may specify that its advertisements only include certain themes or concepts in the provided documents, or fall into a certain cluster or clusters, or some other classification or multiple Available only when classified.

"Advertisement Information" may include any combination of the following: Advertisement Features, Advertisement Serving Constraints, Information Derivable from Advertisement Features or Advertisement Serving Constraints (referred to as "Ad Derived Information"), and/or Information Related to Advertisements (referred to as "Advertisement-Related Information") and extensions of such information (for example, information derived from Advertisement-Related Information).

"Document" may be broadly construed to include any machine-readable or machine-storable product. A document can be a file, a combination of files, one or more files embedded with links to other files, etc.; a file can be of any type, such as text, audio, image, video, etc. The portion of a document that is to be presented to an end user may be considered the "content" of the document. Ad slot areas may be defined in the document by embedded information or directives. In the Internet environment, common documents are web pages. Web pages often include content, which may include embedded information (eg, meta information, hyperlinks, etc.) and/or embedded instructions (eg, Javascript, etc.). In many instances, a document has a unique, addressable storage location and thus can be uniquely identified by that addressable location. A Universal Resource Locator (URL) is a unique address used to access information on the Internet.

"Document Information" may include any information contained in a Document, information that may be derived from information contained in a Document (referred to as "Document Derived Information"), and/or information related to a Document (referred to as "Document Related Information") ), and extensions of such information (for example, information derived from related information). An example of document-derived information is classification based on the textual content of the document. Examples of document-related information include document information from other documents that have links to the instant document, and document information from other documents that have the instant document linked to it.

Document content may be provided on a "content providing application or device". Examples of content-providing applications include Internet browsers (e.g., Explorer or Netscape), media players (e.g., MP3 players, Realnetworks streaming audio file players, etc.), viewers (e.g., Adobe Acrobat pdf reader), etc.

A "Content Owner" is a person or entity that has certain property rights in the content of a Document. A content owner can be an author of a document. Alternatively or in addition, the content owner may have the right to reproduce the content, the right to prepare derivative works of the content, the right to publicly display or perform the content, and/or other rights specified in the content. While a content server can be the content owner for the content in the documents it serves, it doesn't have to be.

Various exemplary embodiments of the invention are now described in §4.2.

§4.2 Exemplary Implementations

§4.2.1 Use of client applications to facilitate delivery of contextually relevant advertising

In accordance with the present invention, a client device (such as an end-user system) may include one or more applications for (1) requesting one or more contextually relevant advertisements, (2) providing at least one contextually relevant advertisement using the content of the requested document advertise. A request for one or more contextual advertisements may include information related to the requested document, such as (1) the content from the document, (2) information about the content of the document (e.g., concepts, topics, categories, classifications, etc.) , and/or (3) a document identifier (eg, the URL of a web page). The returned contextual advertisements may be provided in conjunction with document content in any number of ways, some of which have been described above. The one or more client applications may include, for example, a browser, a browser plug-in, a browser toolbar, or some other application.

If the end user is viewing the advertisement on the computer, the advertisement may be inserted into or provided in conjunction with the document content as follows: (1) an extension (for example, such as a toolbar plug-ins), (2) the content providing operation (e.g., browsing) itself, or (3) a separate application. For example, FIG. 4 illustrates a system 400 in which one or more end-user systems 410 can request documents from one or more content servers 420 and provide content for the requested documents using content provision operations 412 . Advertisement server 430 may be used to provide advertisements related to document content. End-user systems 410, content servers 420, and advertisement servers 430 may communicate with each other via one or more networks and internetworks 440, such as the Internet.

As just described, an end-user system 410 may include a content providing operation 412, such as a browser. One or more end-user systems 410 may also include a content-targeted advertisement serving support operation 414 . In the preceding example, the content-targeted ad serving support operation 414 may be a browser, a browser plug-in, a browser extension (shown as operation 414b of the content serving operation 412b of the end-user system 410b), or some other application (as shown in conjunction with Content providing operation 412a is shown as separate operation 414a, both residing on end-user system 410a).

The advertisement server may include one or more advertisements 434 (and associated advertisement information (not shown)) and content advertisement serving operations 432 . In order to enhance the end user's experience, the advertisement server 410 should provide advertisements that are related in some way to the content requested by the end user. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 10/375,900 (hereby incorporated by reference), which was filed on February 26, 2003 and is entitled "Serving Advertisement Based on Content , with listed inventors as Darell Anderson, Paul Bucheit, Alex Carobus, Claire Cui, Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Deepak Jindal, and Narayanan Shivakumar. The contextual advertisement providing operation 432 may use the document information in the request from the client device to directly or query further document information for determining one or more contextual advertisements. That is, document information (eg, web page content) can be obtained during an ad request. For example, an application on a client device may send all document information required in an advertisement request (eg, web page content, web page concept, etc.), or the required document information may be retrieved using a document identifier. Required document information (eg, web page documents) may be pre-fetched (ie, obtained prior to a specific request) for future contextual advertising targeting. Moreover, there are other methods of obtaining document information, such as those disclosed in the following U.S. patent application: U.S. Patent Application No. 10/113,796 (herein incorporated by reference), filed March 29, 2002, and entitled Method And Apparatus for Increasing Efficiency for Electronic Document Delivery to Users"; U.S. Patent Application No. 09/734,886 (hereby incorporated by reference), filed December 13, 2000, and entitled "Hypertext Browser Assistant"; U.S. Patent Application No. 09 /734,901 (hereby incorporated by reference), filed December 13, 2000, and entitled "System And Method for Performing In-context Searching."

Each content server 420 may include content 424 and content providing operations 422 . In one example, the content providing operation 422 serves a document, such as a web page, using a universal resource locator (URL) provided by the end-user system 410 .

Various different embodiments of the invention are possible. In these embodiments, the client device (end user system) will be the source of the document request and the request for one or more content-related advertisements (including document information), the content server will be the source of the document, and the content advertisement server will be the source of a or multiple sources of contextual advertisements, the client device will receive (either directly or indirectly) the document and the contextual advertisements (separately or together).

5 and 6 are schematic diagrams of notification of information exchanged by an end user system (an example of a client device), an advertisement server, and a content server in various exemplary embodiments of the present invention. The invention is not limited to the sequence of communications shown. Other embodiments are also possible and will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. For example, while various embodiments may include intermediate nodes (eg, proxies), such an embodiment is not shown.

In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 5 , when end-user system 510 submits a document request to content server 520 (communication 550 ), content server 520 returns the requested document (communication 560 ) to end-user system 510 . End-user system 510 then forwards the document information (communication 570 ) to contextual advertisement server 530 . Contextual advertisement server 530 then uses the document information and perhaps other information to determine one or more advertisements. The one or more advertisements are then provided to end user system 510 (communication 580). In this embodiment, end-user system 510 may include means for inserting one or more advertisements into a document. Alternatively, the one or more advertisements may be provided in conjunction with document content (eg, in pop-up and pop-in windows).

In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 6, when end-user system 610 submits a document request (communication 650) to content server 620, it also submits a document information locator (e.g., its URL) to content-related advertisement server 630. (communication 660). The content server returns the requested document (communication 660 ) to the end-user system 610 . The contextual advertisement server 630 then uses the document locator and perhaps other information to obtain (eg, previously prefetched) document information. Contextual advertisement server 630 then uses this document information and perhaps other information to determine one or more advertisements. The one or more advertisements are then provided to end user system 610 (communication 680). In this embodiment, end-user system 610 may include means for inserting one or more advertisements into a document. Alternatively, the one or more advertisements may be provided in conjunction with document content (eg, in pop-up and pop-in windows).

In one exemplary embodiment, the browser/toolbar on the client device sends the URL of the web page offered for browsing to the contextual advertising server. The contextual advertising server then uses the URL and the results of previous web searches to determine content/concepts related to the URL. One or more advertisements related to the determined content/concept are determined and returned to the browser. The browser will then provide at least one of the returned advertisements in a browser frame (but not in the document content, in this particular exemplary embodiment). FIG. 8 illustrates an exemplary browser window 800 that includes a document content section 810 and a section called "browser chrome" 820 above the document section. As shown, contextually relevant advertisements 830 are provided in browser window 800 in a toolbar portion of browser chrome 820 in this exemplary embodiment of the invention. In another embodiment (not shown), contextual advertisements may be placed above or below browser chrome, or above or below a toolbar within browser chrome. Naturally, contextual or other advertisements may be served within the body of a web page document (e.g., using iframes, using a browser program to change the markup language (e.g., HTML, XML, etc.) used to author other web pages, using some other client device application to change the markup language of a web page, etc.).

In this and other exemplary embodiments of the invention, the content of the web page is served prior to (or, at least has initiated, serving) the one or more contextual advertisements. Indeed, in one particular embodiment of the invention, the web page may be served (or at least the serving has already been initiated) even before the client device application requests the contextual advertisement. Doing so can be used to ensure that serving one or more contextual advertisements does not conflict with or pre-empt the loading of web page content. Naturally, the present invention does not require such an order of processing; and embodiments may be used in which advertisements may be served prior to or concurrently with web page content (alternatively, ad serving has been initiated), or on a first-available basis . In other embodiments, the document identifier information (e.g., URL) may be sent to the contextual advertisement server more quickly (e.g., prior to or substantially simultaneously with the request for information to the content server), so that the contextual advertisement server may have more More time is required to perform the processing/matching required to select and return contextually relevant ads, thus enhancing the end user's browsing experience.

Advertisements can be displayed in place and in separate windows. Advertisements are served using at least document (eg, web page) information. The document and/or certain information related to the document is processed and transformed into a format that allows matching with the intended advertisement and selection of appropriate, hopefully relevant, advertisements. The document can also be analyzed when the advertisement is to be displayed or if it has been searched and processed in advance. In the case of search results (or some other dynamically generated content), advertisements may be inserted into interstitial pages prior to loading into the search results. It can be inserted into a mirrored "cached" page on a search engine site. It can be inserted into a closed box (for example, in the case of Google Reader).

Although not shown in the preceding examples, the contextual advertisement server may simply return the advertisement identifier or advertisement locator to the end user system. An end-user system may use an advertisement identifier or locator to (eg, locally) find an advertisement. This arrangement may be advantageous if the ad is "bulky" (eg, image ad, flash ad, etc.). More specifically, this can be used to keep content ad servers lightweight.

§4.2.2 Exemplary data structures

As discussed above, advertisements such as contextual advertisements may be in the form of graphical advertisements such as so-called banners, text-only advertisements, image advertisements, audio advertisements, video advertisements, advertisements combining any one or more of these elements wait. Advertisements may also include embedded information such as links and/or machine-executable instructions. Advertisements may be encoded using a markup language such as HTML, XML, or the like.

In accordance with the present invention, a request for one or more contextual advertisements originating from a client device application may include document information, perhaps as little as a document identification such as a web page URL. Alternatively or additionally, the request may include one or more of the following pieces of information.

area illustrate client The name of the advertising partner. Collaborators may have their names prefixed with a known identifier. Self-service collaborators can be given assigned names. Format The format to use for display. For example, format=160×600 means that corresponds to 120 times 600

The template/output parameter of pixels to be used for display. The parameter file 120x600 can be read by the contextual advertisement server from the template directory. The contextual ad server can then use the specified template file from the parameter file. There can be formatting hierarchies implicitly associated with templates. Parameter files can be searched in the following order (for example, format=120×600titled, client=worldnow): 1. Corresponding to $FORMAT_$CLIENT for display (ie, 120×600_titled_worldnow); 2. If the previous item is not found, Then it tries to use the specified format (ie, 120x600_titled); 3. If the previous item is not found, then it uses the base format (ie, 120x600). randomly Due to the browser's caching, if the person visits the web page again, a new request to display the advertisement may not be generated. This domain increases the chances of serving advertisements by causing new requests to be made when the web page is revisited. url This can be the URL of the document the ad is related to. In one embodiment, URLs are expected to be ignored appropriately. In some examples, collaborators may specify url=null if they pass other document information in the request (eg, "hint" or "content" as explained below). Hl The language of the web page (e.g. hl=en,de,fr for English, German and French respectively) De Web-encoded fonts. Adsafe Ads (e.g. based on adult content, age appropriate category (gaming, tobacco, etc.) or any other criteria) can be differentiated into different categories. Partners can choose to display ads with different levels of security. In one embodiment, if the value of this field is not specified, then the default value is "high", permitted family safety advertisements are displayed, and pornographic advertisements are filtered. Partners can choose to allow "medium" safe ads, which can include gaming ads (which are not family safe) but will still filter pornographic ads. "Low" values can be used to avoid filtering ads. output This field can be used to control output. For example, the default option could be HTML. other

Possible values include html, xml, xml_no_dtd, js, etc. num_adsnum (num is ignored) This field can be used to specify the maximum number of advertisements that will be returned in the response. There can also be exceptions: for example, if "output=html", then this parameter can be ignored. In one embodiment, this value cannot exceed a hard-coded maximum (eg, 10). Alternate_ad_url In one embodiment, this field can only be applied if "output=html". This is useful in situations where the content ad server chooses not to display ads for certain pages (e.g., negative or pornographic pages), and the partner would like to take back the inventory; in such a situation, the partner can specify the URL . content If content is specified, the specified content may be used for contextual advertising targeting (with or without the use of fetched or pre-fetched document information). For example, piece of content code (eg, Javascript) can use this mechanism. In such cases, the content may pass through the "concept extension" stage. Value can be any escaped html or plaintext. For example, if contents=this+is+a+document+about+%3Ch1%Ecar+insurance+%3C/h1%3E, the html expression is "This isa document about<h1>car insurance</h1>", "car insurance " can be given higher weight because of its large font size. In one embodiment, this field is specified at the end of the request so that the remainder of the request is formed and passed appropriately. hint This field can be used to facilitate the use of hints. If hints are specified, they can be used in conjunction with other available document content. This implied value can be given greater weight and if possible appended to each weighted part of each content. If the document content is not usable/retrievable, then the hint can be forwarded to the ad mixer for targeting without concept expansion. In one embodiment, values are specified in the following exemplary format: hints=car+autos, car+insurance, car+loans. This implies an OR query: "car autos"_OR_"car insurance"_OR_"car loans". channel This is a mechanism that collaborators use to keep track of their requests. An example request would look like: channel=bar.com+lang_en+foo_this_is_long. color_bg, color_text, In one embodiment, this mechanism is used by publishers or partners to specify the colors that can be used in their ad formats. This allows publishers or collaborators to create unified

color_link, color_url, color_border Style and color scheme. Similar fields can also be used for other ad characteristics (color, font type, font size, etc.), allowing publishers or partners to choose from a variety of ad display templates. GI In one embodiment, this parameter is used for geographic targeting. In one embodiment, it specifies the country for which the request is made. If set, it can override IP-based geo-targeting. Ip The IP address of the requesting device. For example, this field can be used when the request is made through a partner rather than directly from the user's browser. For example, if a partner formats the ad themselves, they can use a predefined XML output format so that each browser request will hit their server, which in turn will contact our server. In this case, for spam detection and geotargeting, the partner provides the IP address requested by the browser. Eip Same as "ip" above, but encrypted for privacy reasons. For example, this field might be useful if the collaborators have non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from forwarding someone's IP address. Adtest If set to "on", then all requests can be considered debug requests and will not be counted against usage statistics (e.g. impression/clickthrough tracking). This domain is useful for collaborators who want to load test their sites without impacting ad statistics. useragent An xml request can be requested to it. Since the xml request comes from a partner's server, the user agent of the requesting browser may need to determine whether it is a robot or an offline browser. In one embodiment, if the partner does not receive any information in the User-Agent header from the browser, they should leave this blank when requesting.

§4.2.2 Exemplary device

7 is a high-level block diagram of a machine 700 that can affect one or more of the operations described above (e.g., operations performed by an end-user system, operations performed by a content server, or operations performed by a content-related advertisement server) . Machine 700 may basically include one or more processors 710, one or more input/output interface units 730, one or more storage devices 720, one or more system buses, and/or Network 740 for delivering information. One or more input devices 732 and one or more output devices 734 may be coupled with one or more input/output interface units 730 .

One or more processors 710 may execute machine-executable instructions (e.g., C or C++, running on the Solaris operating system available from Sun Microsystems, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., or from numerous operating systems such as Red Hat Inc. of Durham, North Carolina). One or more aspects of the present invention are implemented on the Linux operating system widely available from commercial vendors. At least a portion of the machine-executable instructions may be stored (temporarily or more permanently) on the one or more storage devices 720 and/or may be received from an external source through the one or more input interface units 730 .

In one embodiment, machine 700 may be one or more conventional personal computers. In this example, processing unit 710 may be one or more microprocessors. Bus 740 may include a system bus. Storage 720 may include system memory, such as read only memory (ROM) and/or random access memory (RAM). Storage devices 720 may also include hard disk drives that read from or write to hard disks, magnetic disk drives that read from or write to (e.g., removable) magnetic disks, read from or write to removable (magnetic) optical disks, such as compact disks, or other ( An optical disc drive for magneto-optical media.

A user may enter commands and information into the personal computer through an input device 732, such as a keyboard and a pointing device (eg, a mouse). Other input devices may also (or alternatively) be included, such as a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, and the like. These and other input devices are often connected to processing unit 710 through a suitable interface 730 coupled to system bus 740 . Output device 734, which may include a monitor or other type of display device, may also be connected to system bus 740 by an appropriate interface. In addition to (or instead of) a monitor, a personal computer may include other (peripheral) output devices (not shown), such as speakers and a printer.

§4.3 Conclusion

As can be understood from the foregoing description, the present invention expands the opportunities for advertisers to provide their advertisements to end users who understand the content associated with the advertisements. One or more client device applications may be used to (i) request advertisements relevant to the content of the requested document, and/or (ii) provide one or more contextual advertisements in conjunction with the requested document.

Claims (82)

CLAIMS 1. A method for use in an environment comprising a client device and an advertisement server, the method comprising: a) receiving document information from an application on the client device; b) using at least the received document information to determine at least one advertisement related to the content of said document; and c) sending at least one determined advertisement to the client device. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of determining at least one advertisement related to the content of the document further uses at least advertisement-related information. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the advertisement-related information includes an advertisement concept. 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the document information is document related information. 5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the document information is at least one concept of the document content. 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the document information is a document identifier. 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the act of determining at least one advertisement related to the content of the document comprises: i) use the document identifier to find information about the content of the document; and ii) Determining at least one advertisement related to the content of the document by using the information related to the content of the document. 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the document information includes document content. 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the application is a content requesting and providing application. 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the application program is a browser. 11. The method of claim 1, wherein the application is a browser plug-in. 12. The method of claim 1, wherein the application is a browser toolbar. 13. A method for use in an environment comprising a client device and a contextual advertisement server, the method comprising: a) receiving, by said client device, a requested document comprising content; b) submitting, by the client device, a request for at least one contextual advertisement to a contextual advertisement server; c) receiving at least one contextual advertisement by the client device, the contextual advertisement originating from the contextual advertisement server; and d) providing, by the client device, at least one of the received at least one contextual advertisement. 14. The method of claim 13, wherein the request includes an identifier of the received document. 15. The method of claim 13, wherein the request includes the content of the received document. 16. The method of claim 13, wherein the request includes concepts derived from the content of the received document. 17. The method of claim 13, further comprising: extracting, by the client device, concepts from the content of the received document, Wherein, the request includes the concept extracted by the client device. 18. The method of claim 13 , wherein the act of providing, by the client device, at least one of the received at least one contextual advertisement comprises providing the at least one contextual advertisement in conjunction with content of the requested document At least one of the 19. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) providing said document content in a first window by said client device, Wherein, at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is provided in the second window. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein the second window is provided over and at least partially covers the first window. 21. The method of claim 19, wherein the second window is provided below the first window without covering any part of the first window. 22. The method of claim 19, wherein the second window is provided adjacent to the first window. 23. The method of claim 13, wherein the request for at least one contextual advertisement is generated and sent by a browser application on the client device. 24. The method of claim 23, wherein at least one of the at least one received contextual advertisement is provided by the browser application. 25. The method of claim 13, wherein the request for at least one contextual advertisement is generated and sent by a browser plug-in on the client device. 26. The method of claim 25, wherein at least one of the at least one received contextual advertisement is provided by the browser plug-in. 27. The method of claim 13, wherein the request for at least one contextual advertisement is generated and sent by a browser toolbar on the client device. 28. The method of claim 27, wherein at least one of the at least one received contextual advertisement is provided by the browser toolbar. 29. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) provide the content of the requested document, Wherein the action of giving the content of the requested document is initiated before the action of submitting the request. 30. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) provide the content of the requested document, Wherein, the action of presenting the content of the requested document is completed before the action of submitting the request. 31. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) provide the content of the requested document, Wherein, the action of providing the content of the requested document is started before the action of providing at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is started. 32. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) provide the content of the requested document, Wherein, the action of providing the content of the requested document is completed before starting the action of providing at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement. 33. The method of claim 13, wherein the act of submitting a request for at least one contextual advertisement to a contextual advertisement server occurs prior to the request for the requested document. 34. The method of claim 13, wherein the act of submitting a request for at least one contextual advertisement to a contextual advertisement server occurs substantially simultaneously with the request for the requested document. 35. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) providing, by said client device, the content of said document in a browser window, Wherein, at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is provided in the browser window. 36. The method of claim 13, further comprising: e) providing the content of said document by said client device in a first portion of a browser window, wherein at least one of said received at least one contextual advertisement is provided in a second portion of said browser window, wherein said second portion of browser window is not shared with said first portion of browser window space. 37. The method of claim 36, wherein the second portion of the browser window is a browser chrome portion of the browser window. 38. The method of claim 36, wherein the second portion of the browser is a browser toolbar. 39. The method of claim 36, further comprising: f) Provide browser chrome in the third part of the browser window. 40. The method of claim 39, wherein the third portion of the browser window is disposed between the first portion and the second portion of the browser window. 41. The method of claim 39, wherein the second portion of the browser window is disposed between the first and third portions of the browser window. 42. An apparatus for use in an environment comprising a client device and an advertisement server, the apparatus comprising: a) receiving input of document information originating from an application on the client device; b) means for using at least the received document information to determine at least one advertisement related to the content of said document; and c) means for sending said at least one determined advertisement to said client device. 43. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein said means for determining at least one advertisement related to said document content further uses at least advertisement-related information. 44. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the advertisement-related information includes an advertisement concept. 45. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the document information is document related information. 46. The apparatus according to claim 42, wherein said document information is at least one concept of said document content. 47. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the document information is a document identifier. 48. The apparatus of claim 47, wherein said means for determining at least one advertisement related to said document content comprises: i) means for using the document identifier to find information about the content of the document; and ii) means for determining at least one advertisement related to the content of the document using the content-related information of the document. 49. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the document information includes document content. 50. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the application is a content request and delivery application. 51. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the application program is a browser. 52. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the application program is a browser plug-in. 53. The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the application program is a browser toolbar. 54. An apparatus resident on a client device for use in an environment comprising a contextual advertisement server, the apparatus comprising: a) means for submitting a request for at least one contextual advertisement to said contextual advertisement server; b) input, for receiving: i) the requested document including content; ii) at least one contextual advertisement originating from said contextual advertisement server; and c) means for providing at least one of the received at least one contextual advertisement. 55. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the request includes an identifier of the received document. 56. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the request includes content of the received document. 57. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the request includes a concept derived from the content of the received document. 58. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: means for extracting concepts from the content of the received document, Wherein the request includes concepts extracted by the client device. 59. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the means for providing at least one of the received at least one contextual advertisement provides the at least one of the at least one contextual advertisement in conjunction with content of the requested document. 60. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means for providing said document content in a first window, Wherein, at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is provided in the second window. 61. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the second window is provided over and at least partially covers the first window. 62. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the second window is provided below the first window without covering any part of the first window. 63. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the second window is provided adjacent to the first window. 64. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the means for submitting the request for at least one contextual advertisement is a browser application on the client device. 65. The apparatus of claim 64, wherein the means for providing is the browser application. 66. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein said means for submitting a request for at least one contextual advertisement is a browser plug-in on said client device. 67. The apparatus of claim 66, wherein the means for providing is the browser plug-in. 68. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein said means for submitting a request for at least one contextual advertisement is a browser toolbar on said client device. 69. The apparatus of claim 68, wherein the means for providing is the browser toolbar. 70. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means of providing the content of the requested document, Wherein, the means for providing initiates providing the content of the requested document before the means for submitting submits the request. 71. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means of providing the content of the requested document, Wherein, the means for providing finishes providing the content of the requested document before the means for submitting submits the request. 72. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means of providing the content of the requested document, Wherein, providing the content of the requested document is initiated before at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is initiated. 73. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means of providing the content of the requested document, Wherein, providing the content of the requested document is completed before initiating providing at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement. 74. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the submitting the request for at least one contextual advertisement to a contextual advertisement server occurs prior to the request for the requested document. 75. The apparatus of claim 54, wherein the submitting the request for at least one contextual advertisement to the contextual advertisement server occurs substantially simultaneously with the request for the requested document. 76. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means for providing the content of said document in a browser window, Wherein, at least one of the received at least one content-related advertisement is provided in the browser window. 77. The apparatus of claim 54, further comprising: e) means for providing the content of said document in the first part of the browser window, wherein at least one of said received at least one contextual advertisement is provided in a second portion of said browser window, wherein said second portion of browser window is not shared with said first portion of browser window space. 78. The apparatus of claim 77, wherein the second portion of the browser window is a browser chrome portion of the browser window. 79. The apparatus of claim 77, wherein the second portion of the browser window is a browser toolbar. 80. The apparatus of claim 77, further comprising: f) Provide browser chrome means in the third part of said browser window. 81. The apparatus of claim 80, wherein the third portion of the browser window is disposed between the first portion and the second portion of the browser window. 82. The apparatus of claim 80, wherein the second portion of the browser window is disposed between the first and third portions of the browser window.

Images