Media properties selection method and system based on expected profit from profile-based ad delivery
Patent No. US8959146 (titled "Media properties selection method and system based on expected profit from profile-based ad delivery") on Mar 7, 2014. The application was issued on Feb 17, 2015.
What is this patent about?
’146 is related to the field of behavioral targeting and electronic advertisement placement. Specifically, it addresses the technical and economic inefficiencies of tracking users across different web domains to serve targeted ads based on previously observed browsing behavior, such as search queries or content consumption.
The underlying idea behind ’146 is a profit-driven filtering mechanism for user tagging that occurs before the retargeting process begins. Instead of indiscriminately tagging every visitor to a site for future ad delivery, the system performs a real-time expected profit calculation by subtracting the known cost of ad space on a secondary site from the anticipated revenue generated by the user’s specific profile attributes.
The claims of ’146 focus on a method and system for directing advertisements by transmitting a conditional indicator to a third-party server that controls ad space on a second media property. This transmission is triggered by the acquisition of profile attributes from a visitor's initial interaction with a first media property, ensuring that the subsequent advertisement is specifically correlated to those captured attributes.
In practice, the system functions as a gatekeeper for cookie matching. When a user performs a high-value action, such as searching for a mortgage, the system calculates whether the potential payout from a mortgage ad justifies the cost of buying an impression on a site like a weather portal. If the margin is positive, the system arranges for the secondary site to place a readable tag on the user's device, effectively pre-approving that user for future ad delivery on that specific platform.
This approach differs from prior solutions by introducing an economic threshold to the technical process of user synchronization. While traditional systems focus merely on the ability to recognize a user across domains, this invention ensures that the tagging infrastructure is only deployed when the underlying profile is commercially viable. This prevents the waste of computational resources and ad spend on low-value profiles that would not cover the cost of the secondary media property's inventory.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical Landscape
In the mid-2000s when ’146 was filed, behavioral targeting systems commonly relied on static cookie-matching processes where a profile supplier would redirect a user to a third-party ad network to establish a cross-domain identifier. At a time when digital advertising was typically implemented using fixed-price media buys or broad demographic segments, the technical infrastructure for identifying a specific user across different domains was decoupled from the financial valuation of that user's profile. Systems generally functioned by tagging users based on site interactions and then attempting to locate those tagged users across a network of partner sites, regardless of whether the cost of the ad space on a specific partner site was economically viable relative to the specific profile being targeted. Hardware and software constraints of the era made the real-time synchronization of user profiles with dynamic cost-benefit analysis non-trivial, leading to inefficiencies where behavioral ads were served on high-cost inventory that exceeded the value of the underlying user data.
Prosecution Position
The disclosed invention represents a meaningful technical advancement through the architectural integration of an automated profit-calculation engine directly into the user-tagging and cookie-matching workflow. Instead of indiscriminately tagging users for retargeting across all available media properties, the system calculates an expected profit by deducting the specific cost of ad space at a target media property from the expected revenue generated by a specific behavioral profile. This architectural shift enables a capability where a visitor is only tagged with a property-specific identifier if the calculated profit meets a positive threshold. By dynamically filtering which media properties are authorized to 'recognize' a user based on the intersection of profile value and inventory cost, the system overcomes the technical constraint of inefficient resource allocation in cross-domain advertising, ensuring that the computational and financial overhead of retargeting is only incurred when the specific profile-to-property match is economically justified.
Claims
This patent contains 24 total claims, with claims 1, 17, and 21 serving as the independent claims. The independent claims focus on a method, a computer-server device, and a system for directing electronic advertisements by sending specific visitor profile attributes and display conditions to a third-party server after a visitor leaves a first media property for a second media property. The dependent claims serve to further define the technical implementation, such as using tags and URL redirects, and specify various display conditions including pricing thresholds, time limits, and visitor search actions.
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US8959146
- Application Number
- US14201494A
- Filing Date
- Mar 7, 2014
- Publication Date
- Feb 17, 2015
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO , Google Patents