Hierarchical models of consumer attributes for targeting...

Details Hierarchical models of consumer attributes for targeting... Hierarchical models of consumer attributes for targeting...

1999-02-01

2001-12-04

Gravini, Stephen (Department: 2162)

Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co

Automated electrical financial or business practice or...

Discount or incentive

C705S014270, C705S026640

Reexamination Certificate

active

06327574

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the creation and maintenance of models of consumers, based upon transactional data extracted from structured information received via electronic channels and viewed by the consumer, and the use of those models to aid in presenting targeted content, such as advertising or special offers, in a way that does not compromise the consumer's privacy.
2. Background
Consumers today receive a tremendous amount of information via electronic systems. Many consumers access the Internet or private networks to review information such as personal bank statements, credit card reports, stock portfolios, online account balances, online transaction receipts, commercial web sites, personal home pages, and the like. Some of this structured information reflects consumer behavior that occurs “off-line” such as credit card transactions made at retail establishments, debit, check or other bank transactions, while some of the structured information represents entirely online behavior (including both commercial and non-commercial behavior). Online behavior also includes behavior that is not directly commercial in nature, such as click-through behavior in using the Internet. This type of behavior is captured in structured documents such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) history files stored on the user's computer.
A key goal of most businesses is to target consumers with products and services that is of interest to the consumer based on their interests, preferences, or demographics. Thus many attempts have been made to determine consumer's interests and provide content (e.g. promotions, advertisements) to products and services that match such interests.
Historically, for many types of their transactions, such as credit or banking transactions, consumers received printed statements from credit card companies, bank, and other financial institutions. The paper statement themselves typically only contain limited information identifying each transaction, its amount, date, and so forth. To enhance the advertising opportunities provided when the consumer is reviewing their printed statement, these institutions often add additional promotional insert documents to the statement, in the hope that the consumer will review these separate documents and be motivated to purchase the advertised products or services. Only limited targeting of the content of the advertising inserts has been possible in the past.
With the rise of consumer use of the Internet, advertisers have sought out ways to target promotional information to consumers viewing web pages and the like. On the World Wide Wcb, “banner” advertising is typically used to promote products or services to consumers viewing various web pages. Many web sites attempt to target banner advertising based on the content of a user's input, typically a search request, or other consumer input that is processed by the web site. However, targeting based on a single consumer input does not necessarily result in banner advertisements that actually are of interest to the consumer. This is because consumers frequently search for or desire information that is not necessarily related to their general interests, preferences, or demographics. Even when consumers are searching for information related to their interests, their online behavior may only reflect a small portion of their interests, and the relative importance of certain interests while online may be vastly different than the importance of the same interest when the consumer is off-line. Thus, online behavior may not be indicative of interests that are likely to lead to transactions being consummated online.
Some web sites attempt to target consumers by storing databases that contain some type of identifying data for each consumer. When a consumer accesses a web site coupled to the database, a targeted advertisement may be selected based on the consumer's data. However, this approach suffers from a loss of privacy to the consumer since personal information about some of their behaviors (typically only their click-throughs at the web site) are recorded, as this information is stored in the database without their consent or control. At present, the owner of the web site is typically free to use this consumer information as they see fit. In addition, the consumer information is often based on very limited information about the consumer that either does not accurately reflect their true interests and preferences or does not change automatically in response to both off-line and online consumer behavior. Furthermore, this information is normally limited to a consumer's prior interaction with that particular web site. While, new services are arising which attempt to share consumer information among unrelated websites, such mechanisms may violate consumer privacy and potentially consumer protection laws in various jurisdictions throughout the world.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system, method, architecture and various software products that can augment structured documents that are received and reviewed online by a consumer using historical behavioral information about the consumer, including either online or off-line behavior, while ensuring the personal privacy of each consumer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the limitations of conventional models and targeting methods for delivering custom content to consumers that matches their interests, preferences, demographics, or psychographics. Existing systems make use of data warehouses that aggregate information from a variety of sources, create demographic segments with associated consumer preferences, decide which segment or segments a consumer occupies, and sends information relevant to that segment to the consumer.
The present invention builds upon the analyzing or “interpreting” of structured documents delivered electronically to the consumer for information to create a consumer profile of the consumer based on a broad spectrum of both online and offline behaviors and transactions. In particular, a detailed model of the consumer is built using mathematical functions that map from the specific transactions of the consumer to estimates of the relevancy of certain attributes to the consumer. These models can be used to order a number of pieces of conditional content with respect to how well they match the attributes of the consumer, and hence how well they may appeal to the consumer's interests, preferences, psychographics, or demographics. Display methods in an illumination process, which augments structured documents being electronically delivered to the consumer with the conditional content, allow for the consumer to view the most appropriate piece of content first (by its ordering), followed by the next most appropriate piece of content if the consumer so indicates, and so forth. A content rotator may be used by a consumer to selectively view an ordered set of conditional content.
The consumer profile is continually updated with information extracted from electronically delivered structured documents and from consumer behavior such as selection of content, and thus reflects an accurate and current assessment of the consumer's interests, preferences, and demographics. The consumer profile may also be updated with information received about merchants, products, or consumer model parameters received from remote sources over a network. Changes in a consumer's interests, preferences, and demographics are assumed to be reflected by changes in their behaviors, as reflected through commercial and non-commercial transactions.
The consumer attributes may be defined in a hierarchical model, with aggregated attributes having values derived from lower level attributes (either themselves aggregated, or base level attributes). In this way arbitrarily complex queries can be evaluated against the model to target very specific consumers. The hierarchical model further allows recursive selection of conditional content, with initial selection of co

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