Method and systems for directing profile-based electronic advertisements via an intermediary ad network to visitors who later visit media properties

What is this patent about?

’089 is related to the field of behavioral targeting and electronic advertisement placement. Specifically, it addresses the technical and economic inefficiencies of retargeting users across different media properties when the cost of ad space may exceed the value of the user's behavioral profile.

The underlying idea behind ’089 is to integrate financial viability directly into the user-tagging process by calculating an expected profit margin before committing to a retargeting relationship. Instead of blindly tagging every visitor, the system evaluates the potential revenue from a specific user profile against the cost of ad space on a third-party property, ensuring that the behavioral targeting company only arranges for a cookie matching or tagging event when the transaction is mathematically likely to be profitable.

The claims of ’089 focus on a method where a behavioral targeting system redirects a visitor's computer to an ad network to facilitate a tag without sharing the actual profile data. The process involves recording the visitor's behavior at a first site, establishing a price cap that the targeting company is willing to pay for that specific visitor, and subsequently serving a targeted ad through the ad network only when the cost remains within that cap.

In practice, the invention functions as a gatekeeper for cross-domain tracking. When a user performs a high-value action, such as searching for a mortgage, the system calculates a revenue-per-profile metric. It then selects only those secondary media properties whose ad space costs are low enough to preserve a margin. By providing the ad network with a specific price threshold rather than the raw behavioral data, the targeting company protects its proprietary data while automating the purchase of inventory.

This approach differs from prior art like DoubleClick’s Boomerang by adding a layer of economic filtering to the technical handshake of cookie matching. Traditional systems focus on the mechanics of recognizing a user across domains regardless of cost. In contrast, this invention treats the act of tagging as a financial decision, using a profit-based selection mechanism to determine which third-party domains are authorized to track a user based on the anticipated ROI of their specific profile.