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Title:
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CUSTOM DISPLAY OF USER-SPECIFIC INFORMATION
Document Type and Number:
WIPO Patent Application WO/2017/209641
Kind Code:
A1
Abstract:
A system for manipulating Internet-based ads, comprises the means for detecting an ad on a web site and for determining whether to display a detected ad on a display device or to replace the detected ad with another ad to be displayed on the display device based on a user-profile; and the means for displaying one of the detected ad or the replaced ad. A method for manipulating Internet-based ads, comprises the steps of detecting an ad on a web site; and determining whether to display a detected ad on a display device or replace the detected ad with another ad to be displayed on the display device.

Inventors:
SHULIAR TIMOFEY VIKTOROVICH (RU)
Application Number:
PCT/RU2016/000334
Publication Date:
December 07, 2017
Filing Date:
June 02, 2016
Export Citation:
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Assignee:
SHULIAR TIMOFEY VIKTOROVICH (RU)
International Classes:
G06Q30/02
Foreign References:
US20040024640A12004-02-05
US20130091582A12013-04-11
US20020010757A12002-01-24
US20060074749A12006-04-06
US20060166742A12006-07-27
Attorney, Agent or Firm:
VOSTRIKOV, Gennadi Fedorovich (RU)
Download PDF:
Claims:
CLAIMS

What is claimed is:

1. A system for manipulating Internet-based ads, comprising:

the means for detecting an ad on a web site and for determining whether to display a detected ad on a display device or to replace the detected ad with another ad to be displayed on the display device based on a user-profile; and the means for displaying one of the detected ad or the replaced ad.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the means for displaying is a custom proprietary browser, a standard browser enhanced with an extension or plug-in or a mobile device such as a smart-phone or tablet computer.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the real-world identity of each user is verified by means of billing details verification via one or more payment system at the time of account setup.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein user preferences are both specified directly by the user as well as inferred through heuristic analysis of user actions online over time while using a TlU-enabled Browser.

5. The system according to claim 2, wherein the selected TIUs are displayed instead of default web-site operator's UTIU, according the web page layout and according to the size and position of the UTIU.

6. The system according to claim 2, wherein each individual user may receive personalized offers, including but not limited to special conditions and advertising campaigns, free trial offers, loyalty offers according to that user's explicit and inferred preferences and their profiles.

7. The system according to claim 2, wherein the detected ad is displayed if an advertiser responsible for such ad has compensated a publisher of the browser.

8. The system according to claim 2, wherein the detected ad is replaced with another ad if an advertiser responsible for such ad has not paid a publisher of the browser.

9. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser uses software preprogrammed on the browser to determine whether an advertiser has paid a publisher of the browser.

10. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser contacts a web site maintained by a publisher of the browser to determine whether an advertiser has paid the publisher of the browser.

11. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser does not display the detected ad until after first determining that an advertiser has paid the publisher of the browser.

12. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser is sold pre-programmed with at least one replacement ad.

13. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser downloads at least one replacement ad from a web site maintained by a publisher of the browser.

14. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser replaces a detected ad with an ad supplied by the publisher of the browser.

15. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser replaces a detected ad for a non-paying advertiser with an ad for an advertiser who has paid the publisher of the browser.

16. The system according to claim 2, wherein the browser determines whether an advertiser has paid a publisher of the browser by locally or through database query analyzing a URL or a pass code in a comment portion of an HTML line of code.

17. The system according to claim 2, wherein the user is compensated based on a calculation including a weighted sum of the weighted values assigned to each targeted ad displayed to the user.

18. The system according to claim 17, wherein the user shall not need to take any additional actions or change the usual sequence of actions in order to obtain this financial compensation

19. The system according to claim 17, wherein the size of financial compensation paid to the user shall vary for different TIUs (consisting advertising information), and will be computed from a variable cap on a weighted realized price from the ad publisher to the TlU-enablement device publisher for the display of any particular TIU paid by the advertiser.

20. The system according to claim 2, wherein the user is compensated according to a formula for each of those displayed ads clicked by the user.

21. The system according to claim 2, wherein the content publisher of the website being viewed by the user, is compensated according to a formula for each targeted ad displayed to the user.

22. The system according to claim 2, wherein the content publisher of the website being viewed by the user, is compensated according to a formula for each of those displayed ads clicked by the user.

23. The system according to claim 5, wherein the TIU may be delivered for display within the user's browser from the user's device cache, from an alternative partner advertising service or from designated partners of the alternative advertising service.

24. A method for manipulating Internet-based ads, comprising the steps of:

detecting an ad on a web site; and

determining whether to display a detected ad on a display device or replace the detected ad with another ad to be displayed on the display device.

25. The method according to claim 24, wherein the ad is detected using a browser.

26. The method according to claim 24, wherein the detected ad is displayed if an advertiser responsible for such ad has compensated the publisher of the browser.

27. The method according to claim 24, wherein the detected ad is replaced with another ad if an advertiser responsible for such ad has not paid a publisher of the browser.

28. The method according to claim 24, wherein the browser uses software preprogrammed on the browser to determine whether an advertiser has paid a publisher of the browser.

29. The method according to claim 24, wherein the browser contacts a web site maintained by a publisher of the browser to determine whether an advertiser has paid the publisher.

30. The method according to claim 24, wherein the browser replaces a detected ad for a non-paying advertiser with an ad for an advertiser who has paid a publisher of the TlU-enablement of the browser.

31. The method according to claim 24, wherein the browser determines whether an advertiser has paid a publisher of the TIU enablement of the browser by analyzing a URL, a pass code in a comment portion of an HTML line of code or a hidden HTML POST form-field.

Description:
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CUSTOM DISPLAY OF

USER-SPECIFIC INFORMATION

Technical Field

The present invention relates to Internet and mobile device advertising, and more particularly to a method for leaving intact, replacing, customizing or supplementing any such information at the time of display.

Background Art

Internet-based advertising is an important source of revenue both for the owners of web sites that display such ads, as well as for the advertisers who use such ads to sell their goods and/or services to persons viewing such web sites. Conventional systems exist which enable browsers used by persons viewing a web site to simply block such ads from appearing on their browser. However, no mechanism presently exists that enables such Internet-based or mobile-device ads to be manipulated so that such ads can be selectively replaced with other ads, selectively supplemented with other ads, or so that a browser can selectively capture such ads so that they are not displayed on the browser, but are instead saved for viewing at a more convenient time. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide such a mechanism. It is a further object of the present invention to capture advertising revenue into a pool of funds that will pay the participants in the ecosystem, to the benefit of the browser provider, a browser plug-in provider to a mobile app provider, to the publisher of viewed content and specifically to the viewer of that content, who is now paid for viewing those ads, instead of just the content publisher being paid to present ads intermixed with its own content.

US Patent filing US8271886, published on September 18, 2012, discloses a method for ad placement, including directing a browser's query to the ad server's database, which then displays the received advertisements interleaved with the web site publisher's content and then prepared for display by this user device (web browser or mobile app). The disclosed system and method of delivering and displaying the advertisement allows for the display of targeted advertising in accordance with user profile, user-declared preferences and heuristically inferred user preferences. This system and method, however, does not replace the un-targeted information, but simply adds (supplements with) some additional advertising material. The disclosed method and system also lacks the ability to place this new advertising material according to the original layout or design of the web page.

Disclosure of Invention

A system and method for manipulating Internet based advertising, wherein ads detected by a browser can either be: displayed; deleted; selectively replaced with other ads; or selectively captured so that the ads are removed from the web page and saved in a directory for viewing at a later, more convenient time. The aforementioned acts of displaying, deleting or replacing ads can be selectively performed as specified by the publisher (provider) of the browser, or a browser plug-in provider or a mobile app provider. The aforementioned act of capturing and storing ads for a later date can be selectively performed by the person using the browser or mobile app.

The invention solves the problem of displaying targeted information (including advertisements) to each user according each user's specified preferences and heuristic analysis of web-browsing behavior history, while not making it necessary for the user to view any of the original untargeted information by means of replacing the original untargeted information.

The result of this current invention is achieved by means of replacement the nodes of DOM tree with the original untargeted information by the user-profile's preferential targeted material.

The selection of Targeted Information Units ("TIUs") to be displayed is conducted according to a scoring calculation that takes into account a combination of one or more of:

User specified preferences, usually stored associated with the user's profile data.

Heuristically inferred user preferences based on Internet and app usage behavior, sometimes stored associated with the user's profile data.

Untargeted Information Units' ("UTIUs") database.

UTIUs are identified by the means of heuristic analysis of the web page being viewed by the end-user.

The sizes of UTIUs to be replaced. The sizes of TIUs to be displayed may be exact to the UTIUs to be replaced, or may vary (unless the change of the size will affect the layout or appearance of the page). This technical result is achieved during the process of displaying web pages, including the steps of:

A query from the user device (browser, mobile app) to the UTIUs Server with URL of the requested web page and user authentication details.

A returned list of UTIUs for the requested web page (if any known).

Heuristic analysis of the web page.

Detection of UTIUs based on the data returned from UTIUs Server and results of the analysis.

Query from User device to the TIUs server including the sizes of UTIUs to be replaced and the User profile, including user preferences.

Returned TIUs to be displayed on the appropriate DOM tree nodes, preserving the original layout and appearance of the page.

Brief Description of Drawings

FIG. 1 shows an exemplary web-site page, with ads provided via an ad network and displayed by the web-site content publisher.

FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a system for displaying the Internet and manipulating detected Internet-based ads according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 shows a logical flow-chart of the system components interacting with one another to implement the ad selection and display process of the present invention.

Best Mode for Carrying out the Invention

Definitions

1) The terms used in this disclosure are as defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium.) and the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). These are the international standards organizations for the Internet and the World Wide Web.

2) Web Page - various combinations of static HTML marking language, an embedded (and executable on the client side) script language (usually JavaScript or Adobe Flash), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and DOM (document object model). This includes embedded application based on Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Oracle Java and other program delivery and execution platforms and multimedia web-applications. 3) The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents.

4) Information Unit - any unit or node of a DOM-tree.

5) Targeted Information Unit (TIU) - node of the DOM tree that replaces the original untargeted information in accordance with some or all of user profile, including demographics, declared (explicit) user preferences and heuristically inferred user preferences.

6) Untargeted Information Unit (UTIU) - node of the DOM tree that shall be replaced by the TIU.

7) Group of Untargeted Information Units - two or more UTIUs positioned in close proximity to each other and arranged in a way that allows replacement of the group with one TIU of an appropriate size.

8) User profile data - information containing some or all of the user's username, password, real- name, contact information, social network, browsing history, web site or app interaction behavior history, declared (explicit) user preferences and heuristically inferred user preferences.

9) User preferences - information about user interests used to select TIUs individually for every user. User preferences are both self-specified (declared, explicit) or heuristically inferred and may include, but are not limited to:

User interests identified by the user or revealed as a result of analysis of the visited web pages, search requests and other actions.

Social and demographic data (age, gender, country of residence, occupation, etc).

Social network analysis data (friends and their interests)

Topics and subjects specified by user as unwanted.

Other attributes that may affect the interests of the user: operating system or type of user device, installed applications, current geo position, etc.

10) Web browser - software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web, according to standards set by the W3C.

11) TlU-enabled Browser - web browser with the capability of detecting and replacing UTIUs with TIUs of appropriate size and according to the user profile data. The TlU-enabled browser could take the form of a stand-alone application, as a plug-in to commercial and non-commercial web browsers, a mobile device app or library for mobile device apps, or an in-browser multimedia application. 12) Heuristic analysis - method of detection UTIUs and/or sizes of UTIUs in case of absence congruent information in the Untargeted Information Units Database. The analysis is based on comparison of qualities (size, structure, URL and other) of known UTIUs with the qualities of potential UTIUs.

13) Software Application for Displaying Advertisement (SODA) - computer software dedicated to displaying TIUs, saved TIUs, rescheduled TIUs or potential TIUs. SODA runs independently from any particular web browser or other applications and can be used simultaneously with other applications such as a text editor, a graphic editor, a web browser, games and other.

14) User device - is comprised of both local software and hardware components:

Hardware component: computer in stationary, mobile or wearable format, a mobile phone or any other device with Internet access which can execute the software components.

Software component: operating system capable of running the TlU-enabled browser or SODA or both in conjunction.

15) Publisher - has been used through-out this disclosure to refer to three types of entities. One is the "Software Publishers" that provide browser software, browser plug-in software, in-page browser executed media software, or mobile device application software. Another is the "Content Publishers" that generally speaking host web-sites with content attractive to various users of different market-segments or demographics. These Content Publishers often interleave advertising from their own servers or third parties with their content, generating advertising revenue for themselves. In the case of mobile devices, these publishers are often distinguishable from the aforementioned "Software Publisher" as they often provide site-specific "mobile apps". The third type of publisher is an "Advertisement Publisher" that maintains databases and servers filled with their own advertisement material or material from a network of advertisers or from advertiser marketplaces. Their business is typically maintaining large ad inventory and providing spot-pricing for targeted placement of that advertisement inventory to visitors to (users of) many web content publisher's sites or mobile app users.

FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a system for manipulating Internet-based ads according to the present invention. The System is comprised of a browser which is processed by a computer or the like. The system uses an Internet service provider (ISP), such as Comcast, to deliver web pages from a content provider's server for a web-site, such as wsj.com (Wall Street Journal), and to display web pages from a server for a web site maintained by the publisher of the browser software, e.g. the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. System can be used irrespective of the type of connection, i.e., telephone line, cable line, digital subscriber line (DSL), satellite link, etc., that is used to establish a connection between the browser and servers. Exemplary embodiments of such a system may include, but are not limited to a personal computer, a television, VRC or hard disk video replay device which has the capability of causing the display of a web page in accordance with the principles of the present invention.

The browser detects the presence of ads on a web page using any one of numerous conventional techniques such as detecting an ad based on: the size an object occupies on a web page; the type of picture that appears on a web page; the location/placement of a picture on a web page; the presence of a certain object types, e.g., a ".gif or ".jpg" image embedded within a web page; the presence of animated graphics which are frequently used in on-line ads on the web page; or the presence of key words, such as "sponsor", "ad", etc., in the HTML code that specifies the configuration of a web page. The browser can use a database of ad publisher URLs. The browser can also detect ads using heuristic analysis or any combination of the aforegoing techniques. When the enabled browser detects an Internet-based ad, it displays the ad, deletes the ad, or replaces the detected ad with another ad. Such a feature can be used in several ways. For example, in one embodiment, this feature enables the partnered publisher of a TIU enabled browser, i.e. Mozilla Corporation, or the TIU plug-in publisher to cause browser to delete any ads it detects that appear for one of the publisher's competitors, e.g., Microsoft.

In another embodiment, browser replaces ads that it detects for the browser publisher's competitors with ads preferred by the browser publisher. In still another embodiment, the browser publisher can earn revenue by causing browser to replace detected ads for companies that have not compensated (paid) the browser publisher with ads by companies that have compensated the browser publisher. In still yet another embodiment, the browser publisher can earn revenue by only enabling browser to display ads and/or web pages for advertisers and/or web site operators, respectively, who have paid the browser publisher. In still yet another embodiment, the browser publisher can collect revenue from advertisers and disburse the funds to the end-users, essentially paying them to surf the Internet. The browser can be fabricated to include any number of the foregoing embodiments. Fig 2 shows that the display of the TIU (2-1) is the user device (personal computer or mobile device with Internet access capabilities) connected to Internet and central server (2-7) connected to the Internet.

i. The TlU-enabled browser installed on the User device (2-1) sends the query to the central server (2-7). The query contains the URL of the web page requested by user. ii. The Central Server (2-7) verifies if user is authenticated by matching the provided identification information to the user profiles' database stored on the User Database Server (2-8). iii. If the authentication process is unsuccessful, the central server returns a request for the users authentication information to be provided to the User device (2-1)

iv. If the authentication process is successful the central server retrieves user profile data elements including user declared and inferred preferences from User Preferences Server (2-9) v. The Central server (2-7) sends a query to the UTIU Server (2-4) for the UTIUs known on this page.

vi. The TlU-enabled browser installed on the User device (2-1) performs heuristic analysis of the page in order to identify any potential UTIUs

vii. The TlU-enabled browser installed on the User device (2-1) identifies the UTIUs (including the exact size and position of each UTIU) based on the results of the heuristic analysis of the web page and the information received from UTIU's server database, if any.

viii. The TlU-enabled browser installed on the User device (2-1) sends the query for the TIU to the Central Server (2-7).

ix. The Central Server requests the TIUs from the TIU Server (2-4) according to the user profile, including declared and inferred user preferences and the requested media size (image or video display dimensions).

x. The TIU Server (2-4) performs the search of the TIUs with matching parameters and returns the query results to the user device (2-1), trough the Central Server (2-7)

xi. The TIU Server (2-4) updates the account balances of the all on-page advertisers and the user according the number and origin of the TIUs displayed, the time of the display and whether they were subsequently clicked by the user. The information about user's balance is updated on the user device (1) through the Central Server (2-7).

The Central Server (2-7) is also used to balancing the Internet traffic and computation load on the other Servers.

Fig. 3 graphically illustrates this sequence of interaction between the TIU display system and user device.

The present invention is implemented using software which can be written in any programming language. The present invention is also implemented using hardware such as a microcontroller, a microcomputer, or a microprocessor. The present invention can be used on a global or local computer network, on a personal computer, With viewable storage media such as a CD ROM, on a wireless telephone, on a wireless personal assistant, on a mobile smart phone such as an iPhone, or on any type of wired or wireless device that enables digitally stored information to be viewed on a display device. Also, information displayed and viewed using the present invention can be printed, stored to other storage medium, and electronically mailed to third parties.

Numerous modifications to and alternative embodiments of the present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art in view of the foregoing description. Accordingly, this description is to be construed as illustrative only and is for the purpose of teaching those skilled in the art the best mode of carrying out the invention. Details of the embodiments may be varied without departing from the spirit of the invention, and the exclusive use of all modifications which come within the scope of the appended claims is reserved.