One form of targeted advertising often used in electronic media is a bid for placement in broadcast emails targeted to a specific group of recipients having one or more interests in common. For example, newsletter emails on a specific topic (e.g., parenthood) often include a number of Uniform Resource Locator (URL) listings to websites of advertisers catering to the specific topic (e.g., a toy store's website), whereupon the recipients of the newsletter email can “click” on the link to view the advertised website via a web browser (an event herein referred to as a “click-through”).
Advertisers may place a bid on the amount of money to be paid for any “click-through” resulting from the placement of an advertisement included in the targeted email. In fact, several advertisers may bid against each other for placement, with the highest bidder given priority over other bidders. For example, the highest bid for a newsletter email may be listed first and other bidder's advertisements can be listed in descending order based on their bid. Accordingly, as the cost per click-through (e.g., bid) for the advertising company increases, the closer that company's listing is to the most visible or prominent part of the newsletter email (e.g., the top of the newsletter email). Higher placement of the advertisement in a newsletter email often leads to more click-throughs for that advertisement and thus, more traffic to the advertiser's target web site.
While such pay-for-placement email advertisements provide benefit to advertisers seeking targeted advertising mechanisms, the email provider often does not experience the full revenue potential possible from the pay-for-placement advertising in the emails. Common pay-for-placement email advertising systems typically do not take into account variations in the relationship between the advertiser, the email provider, and the content of the newsletter emails. To illustrate, advertisers continuously change their bids for advertisement placement, relationships with new advertisers may be developed, relationships with advertisers may be ended, new advertisements may be available, etc.
While the relationship between an advertiser and the email provider may be fluid, a newsletter email typically is persistent, being delivered to recipients' mailboxes typically within minutes of being sent. The newsletter then may reside in a recipient's mailbox for an unknown period of time (e.g., for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc.) after it was originally delivered before the recipient views the newsletter email. During this variable time period, the relationship between the newsletter email provider and the advertisers having advertisements listed in the delivered newsletter email may have changed. For example, some or all of the listed advertisers' accounts may have been depleted of money, some or all of the listed advertisers may no longer have a relationship with the pay-for-placement email provider, the relative ranking of the bids by advertisers may have changed in the duration, and the like. Accordingly, the arrangement of the advertisement listings in the original newsletter email when sent may not reflect the arrangement of advertisement listings that is most advantageous to the email provider at the time that the newsletter email is opened by a recipient.
To illustrate, an advertiser, based in its bid, may be listed in the most prominent position at the time of transmission of a newsletter email. In the time period between the transmission of the email and the viewing of the email by a recipient, however, the advertiser terminated its relationship with the newsletter email provider and, therefore, no longer has a paying relationship with the email provider. Accordingly, any click-throughs to the terminated advertiser resulting from the recipient clicking the terminated advertisers listing in the newsletter email is, in essence, lost revenue for the email provider since the terminated advertiser receives these click-throughs for free. In a similar manner, any changes in the bids or rate of click-throughs for the advertisers since transmission would not be reflected in the advertising listings in the email as transmitted. As a result, the email provider may not realize its full revenue potential had the advertising listings in the newsletter email reflected the optimum advertising listing arrangement at the time the email was viewed by a recipient. Other drawbacks exist with current techniques for targeted advertising via email.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds