Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-03
2001-09-04
Millin, Vincent (Department: 2164)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
C705S026640, C705S027200, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06285985
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic advertising, particularly the use of “banner ads.”
2. State of the Art
Digital convergence has resulted in an increasing blurring of distinctions between computing and broadcast media, a notable example of which is Internet TV, i.e., equipment and services that provide for Internet access using a TV screen as the display. Broadcast media are often subsidized by advertising and provided free-of-charge to the consumer. A similar trend has emerged in the Internet arena. Internet directories and search engines may be used free-of-charge, however, advertisements are prominently displayed at nearly every turn.
Another example of this trend is the Pointcast™ Network, in which a piece of software installed on a user's machine automatically connects to the Internet and grabs news that the user wants directly off the Internet to create customized desktop news pages daily, hourly, or as often as the user wants. The news pages are displayed along with advertisements.
In contrast to advertisement-subsidized software, there is also a considerable body of “freeware,” software that can be freely distributed. If a user finds the software especially useful or enjoyable, the user may be encouraged to make nominal payment to the author of the software.
Despite the foregoing trends, most “mainstream” software is purchased (or, more accurately, licensed), with the price typically ranging from several tens of dollars to many thousands of dollars depending on the software program. No mechanism exists that would allow a software developer to produce an advertisement-subsidized version of a software program without extensive source code changes.
Using the Internet to transmit selected advertisements or other information in background mode to a local computer is known. One such system is described in patent publication WO 9707656 entitled METHOD AND APPRATATUS FOR TRANSMITTING AND DISPLAYING INFORMATION BETWEEN A REMOTE NETWORK AND A LOCAL COMPUTER, published Mar. 6, 1997, and incorporated herein by reference. In the foregoing system, the selection of what advertisements or other information to transmit to a particular user is based on user-defined preference. Such a system suffers from certain disadvantages. For example, to correctly anticipate what information should be sought from users is difficult. If a need or desire for additional user information become apparent, it is necessary to have user update their preferences. This cycle of recognizing a need for further user information and requesting users to update their preferences may occur repeatedly. Hence, although data transfer may occur in background mode, operation of the system is quite visible—and quite possibly distracting—to users.
Furthermore, the foregoing patent relates to a system in which the acquisition and display of the advertisements is carried out by a program that has been created expressly for the purpose of presenting the advertisements and information to the user rather than in a program that the user is intrinsically interested in operating. The disadvantage of this approach is that a computer user may not find the program compelling enough to allow it to operate on the user's computer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention, generally speaking, provides a mechanism allowing a software developer to present advertisements through a software program. In accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the invention, an advertisement module is attached to the software program. The function of the advertisement module is to retrieve advertisements from an advertisement server and to display them to the user. The advertisements are varied to retain the interest of the user. Furthermore, information about the user may be sent to the advertisement server, allowing advertisements to be targeted to the user. Such information may include the category of the software program and the user's usage of the software program, for example. Associated with the ad server are a rules engine and a usage database. Various policies may be controlled by the software developer as well as the operator of the ad server, including the nature of information to be sent to the advertisement server, whether connection will be scheduled or will occur “opportunistically” in conjunction with user-initiated Internet access, whether prolonged inability to connect will result in use of the software being disallowed, etc. When the user clicks on the ad being displayed, the ad module may cause various actions to be taken. For example, a Web browser on the user's machine may be started up and pointed to a location providing further information about the subject matter of the ad. Alternatively, the ad module may simply show a new ad in the ad screen The new add could be a repeat of an already downloaded ad (with repeat count and frequency specified by instructions accompanying the ad) or it could be a freshly downloaded ad. The usage database associated with the ad server is used to compute billing to advertisers, provide for auditing of circulation, etc. Click-through rewards may be provided for in which the software publisher is paid each time a user expresses interest in an ad carried by a software program of the software publisher by clicking through the ad.
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Broadvision Uses its On-line Marketing Database to Deliver Personalised World Wide Web Sites, Computergarm International, Mar. 21, 1996.*
GeoCities Partners with StarPoint to Serve millions of Personalized Ads Daily, PR News Wire, Jul. 21, 1997.*
Poppe Tyson Partners with Atlanta Software Leader to form Doubleclick—The First Advertising Network for The Internet, PR Newswire, Feb. 5, 1996.*
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Burns Doane , Swecker, Mathis LLP
Millin Vincent
Patel Jagdish N
Preview Systems, Inc.
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