Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing – Using interconnected networks
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-30
2003-09-02
Wiley, David (Department: 2143)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
Using interconnected networks
C709S224000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06615251
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates in general to interactive communication networks such as the Internet or other public or private networks (generically the “Internet”) and, in particular, to providing user targeted content including content initially displayed or otherwise presented during interval and/or dead time (“waiting time”) of an Internet session, e.g., during processing time associated with the exchange of information between the Internet content providers and Internet content users.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In recent years, public participation in the Internet has expanded at a rate that has, at times, surprised industry analysts and service providers. This expansion has not escaped the attention of the business community who is actively searching for ways to capitalize on this medium of ever-increasing importance. In the attempt to quickly respond to this phenomenon, the business community and its promotional and advertising consultants have sometimes analogized the Internet to more familiar media in order to analyze business opportunities and apply accumulated experience and wisdom to the unfamiliar and poorly understood new medium. In this regard, some have viewed the Internet as a form of electronic publishing and have focused on printed media as an instructive business paradigm. Others, focusing on the dynamic voice and image potential of Internet communications, have viewed broadcast media as the most instructive source of business experience.
A result of this current tendency to analyze business opportunities on the Internet in view of experiences with more familiar media is that initial advertising efforts on the Internet have closely resembled traditional advertisements in appearance, format and function. Among the most common Internet advertisements are so-called banner advertisements. These advertisements typically appear in high traffic areas such as the home page of a browser, search engine or website, and appear to the user as an area or banner occupying a portion of the monitor working area or graphical desktop. These banners are typically designed much like advertisements in the printed media using well-established principles intended to draw attention away from the primary content to the banner and maximize public response. Others have proposed video or audiovisual commercials in the television style. Such commercials, as in television, would interrupt and be interspersed with the flow of information over the Internet.
Such approaches have not been fully effective. The television style advertisement proposals have met great resistance and, in general, have not been implemented by wary service providers. Banner advertisements have also been quite limited in effectiveness. In either case, although traditional demographic projections have sometimes been used to target classes of consumers (e.g., advertisements for investment services on business information sites), advertisements are often not of interest to specific Internet users and response rates are low. As a result, an exaggerated but common lament in the business community today is that nobody is making money by advertising on the Internet.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is based, in part, on a recognition that the Internet as a medium is intrinsically different from traditional media in ways that demand new business approaches. In particular, conventional advertising techniques largely ignore the interactive basis of the Internet and are therefore subject to certain pitfalls and/or fail to take advantage of certain opportunities of the interactive environment. Examples of business factors peculiar to this interactive environment include the following:
users who select to participate in the Internet medium tend to be interested in retaining control over their Internet sessions and, therefore, often ignore and even resent advertisements that are pushed onto their desktops and interrupt their sessions or intrude on their desktop areas;
although attempts have been made, with some success, to convert the Internet medium to a push medium, content is not typically broadcast over the Internet, but rather, is usually pulled down or retrieved by identifiable users; and
the interactive nature of Internet communications results in waiting times associated with data transmission where the user may be more readily engaged in a manner that is unobtrusive.
These and other factors of the interactive environment are an important basis of the present invention. In particular, the ability to specifically direct advertisements and other content, including entertainment, to users based on user information is an important advantage of the present invention.
According to one aspect of the present invention, selected messages are provided at a user node that are initiated during a waiting time of an Internet session. The messages can be, for example, promotional or advertising content, product information, a public service announcement or other messages of possible interest to the user. The associated process involves providing a selection of messages, monitoring a user node during an Internet session to identify a website access request, selecting a message from the selection of messages and displaying the message at the user node during a waiting time related to the website access request. The waiting time relates to a time interval during which the user node communicates with a server of the requested site and associated set up periods. Preferably, the waiting time during which messages are displayed fall within the time period beginning when the user selects a site and ending upon initiation of site display on the user's desktop. The selection of messages is preferably provided by storing the selection at the user node, e.g, on the user's hard drive or in cache, in a local area network of the user, or otherwise in storage accessible by the user without Internet communication. This selection is stored, for example, prior to an Internet session or as an explicit or background function of a browser service or searching engine during an Internet session. A selection may be stored only for use during a particular session or may be saved for use in subsequent sessions.
The website access request can be identified in a variety of ways. For example, operating system messages may be monitored to identify a “mouse down” message having desktop coordinates corresponding to a hot link area of the desktop. Keyboard messages may be monitored to identify entry of a URL address or the like. Alternatively, protocol communications such as TCP/IP or HTTP communications of the browser may be monitored to identify a header message associated with a site access request. Upon identifying such an access request, a message can be selected and played at the user node. The message may be selected automatically by logic implementing the process of the present invention, or the user may be allowed to select from message choices, e.g., displayed in a menu or graphically presented in the format of a room or gallery through which the user may peruse.
According to another aspect of the present invention, waiting time messages are terminated at the end of the waiting time so as to minimize Internet session intrusion. The associated process involves providing a waiting time message such as described above, monitoring communications relating to loading of a requested website to identify a selected status relative to the loading, and terminating playback of the waiting time message based on the identified status. In one implementation, the monitored communications are protocol or other communications between a browser and a server of the selected website. Alternatively, operation of the browser may be monitored to obtain an indication relating to loading status. As a further alternative, operating system messages may be monitored relative to website display status. Playback of the waiting time messages can be terminated, for example, upon receiving an indication that a website page is ready for prelimina
Klug John R.
Klug Noah H.
Nguyen Phuoc
Wiley David
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