Today, there are several known methods for causing Internet users to be aware of products and services of WSO's. One extensively used method is promoting with banners integrated in web pages or popping up when a web page is visited. There are Internet services which function as mediators between WSO's, who wish to promote themselves and WSO's willing to promote other WSO's services or products at their web sites. These mediators find the best match between WSO's of the two mentioned types, and are responsible for money transactions from promoted WSO's to promoting WSO's.
Another popular method is promoting web sites by search engines results. One type of search engine places search results according to the amount of a bid set by each WSO who wishes that his site would appear in the search results of a specific query. U.S. Pat. No. 6,778,975 to Anick, et al. describes a search engine for selecting targeted messages. Another type of search engine arranges search results according to the popularity of the WSO site. WSO's make a great competitive effort, including purchasing special web tools for locating their web sites' description in a higher position in the results list.
Other tools known on the Internet are browser add-ons. Often browser add-ons are created and provided by popular WSO's to be installed by Internet users. The browser add-ons are located at the top of the web browser, and provide functionality and look, which are usually related to the providing WSO.
A combination of the last two methods, described above, are browser add-ons functioning as dynamic search engines, automatically providing to an Internet user, a list of links to Internet pages, related to the contents of the visited web page. U.S. Pat. No. 6,282,548 to Burner et al. describes a method for generating and displaying metadata as supplemental information concurrently with the web page.
All these promotion methods require an investment of time and money from the WSO's, and have only a low efficiency. Only browser add-ons provide a constant connection with Internet users, who are likely to use the services of the WSO or purchase his products, and are offered only by large scale WSO's having the resources for generating and managing the browser add-ons.
Thus, there is a need for a method which will give every WSO the ability to be constantly and dynamically connected to Internet users. The method needs to provide a non-obtrusive way of promoting the products and services of the WSO, yet require from him minimal investment of time and money, and be user-friendly.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds