Method of delivery, targeting, and measuring advertising over networks

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses for targeting the delivery of advertisements over a network such as the Internet are disclosed. Statistics are compiled on individual users and networks and the use of the advertisements is tracked to permit targeting of the advertisements of individual users. In response to requests from affiliated sites, an advertising server transmits to people accessing the page of a site an appropriate one of the advertisement based upon profiling of users and networks.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Area of the Art This invention relates to methods of delivery of advertisements and measuring responses to those delivered advertisements and in particular relates to the targeting of advertisements delivered over networks such as the Internet. 2. Description of the Prior Art In advertising, it is considered highly desirable to target advertisements to the appropriate potential customer base, rather than to broadcast advertisements in general. It has long been known that, for example, advertisements for computers should generally not appear in magazines on gardening and, conversely, advertisements for gardening tools should not appear in magazines on computers. Similarly, advertisers have generally targeted their advertisements on television to programs appropriate for the desired customer base. It has also long been known that an advertisement that is repeated too often will eventually become ignored by consumers. Therefore, an advertiser typical...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

To effect such a capability, an advertising server process is provided as a node on the network. The various advertisements are stored on the network of the server and preferably on the server. When, for example, a user using a web browser accesses a web page that is affiliated with the advertising server process, the affiliated page's encoding includes an embedded reference to an object provided by the advertising server process. That causes the user's browser to contact the advertising server process to provide the advertising image or information that will appear on the accessed web page as displayed by the user's browser. Using the address information and / or other information passed by the browser for the user, including the page being accessed by the user, the advertising server process determines an appropriate advertisement to select for the particular user. In addition, the advertising server process will use information such as the number of times the user has seen various advertisements, how often the advertisement has been seen by any user and the start and stop date for the various advertisements to select which advertisement to transmit to the user's web page for display.

Problems solved by technology

It has also long been known that an advertisement that is repeated too often will eventually become ignored by consumers.

Nonetheless, such advertising has had, so far, a poor rate of response because it is untargeted advertising.

In addition, if a user of such computer networks is continuously exposed to the same advertisement, the response rate to the advertisement will generally decline.

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