181results about How to "Total revenue maximization" patented technology

A content-targeting ad system is provided with a user behavior (e.g., selection (e.g., click), conversion, etc.) feedback mechanism. The performance of individual ads, or groups of ads, may be tracked on a per document (e.g. per URL) and / or on a per host (e.g. per Website) basis. The performance of ad targeting functions may also be tracked on a per document, and / or per host basis. Such user behavior feedback data may be processed (e.g., aggregated) into useful data structures. Such user behavior feedback data (raw or processed) may then be used in a content-targeting ad system to improve ad quality, improve user experience, and / or maximize revenue.

In an automated leads-and-bids exchange system, bid profiles are defined to describe desires of lead buyers. Received leads are matched to active ones of the bid profiles whose specifications the leads substantially match. An auctioning subsystem finds the highest one or group of bids for each given lead. A quality rating database rates the quality of leads provided by different sellers. A price discounting engine discounts the amount paid to sellers who are rated as inferior sources of leads.

A system and method of managing virtual documents is described. In this approach, a user database is set up on a network-connected computer. There are a number of virtual documents that are created by on other network-connected computers. These virtual documents have associated with them an attribute file having known header and field information. The virtual documents and their associated attribute files are sent from the other network-connected computers to the network-connected computer, which then categorizes and stores information from the virtual documents according to the contents of the attribute file.

A system and method for creation, distribution and tracking of advertising via electronic networks, enabling creation of advertisements using licensed third party content and placement of said ads at desired network locations, utilizing an auction of ad spaces based on bids placed by advertisers to have their ads displayed at such locations. When a network user / ad viewer requests an ad by clicking or other action, an auction algorithm executes to select the ad to be displayed from those that bid for display at such ad space location and then the ad is composed and delivered to the ad space location by accessing a relational database storing commands that retrieve, assemble and dispatch the licensed ad content. Usage and display of licensed content on designated ad space is tracked to enable cost-per-use charging for both use of licensed content and ad display at the designated ad space.

In an automated leads-and-bids matching system, bid profiles are defined to describe desires of lead buyers. Received leads are matched to active ones of the bid profiles whose specifications the leads substantially match. Lead segmentation data is captured on-the-fly for example by inducing potential consumers to navigate their way through tree-organized web sites that categorize the consumers according to their geographic location, income / revenue range, class of products desired and / or other attributes. Live voice or other telecommunication connections to the pre-classified consumers are coupled to corresponding, pre-classified telecommunication nodes of a call processing system. The call processing system deduces the segmentation data of the consumers from the identities of the pre-classified nodes through which their connections pass. The deduced segmentation data is passed to an automated matching system or auctioning subsystem that finds the highest bids for each given lead. A quality rating database rates the quality of leads provided by different sellers. A price discounting engine discounts the amount paid to sellers who are hot-rated as sources of inferior leads.

A system and method of managing virtual documents is described. These virtual documents have associated with them an attribute file having known header and field information. By using the attribute file information, a network-connected computer can categorize and store virtual documents in a database corresponding to a particular user of the system. According to one aspect, the system is designed so that it can interface with an interactive television computer system so that a user can select virtual documents that he wishes to retain while viewing a television program. The selected virtual documents are then categorized and stored in the database corresponding to the user. According to another aspect, virtual documents can be downloaded from network-connected computer to a user's computer and then transferred to a smart card device. Specifically, a merchant coupon may be downloaded to the smart card device so that it may be redeemed at a merchant's store.

Content delivery is provided responsive to mediacast content consumer requests by providing personalized mediacasts to each of a plurality of mediacast content consumers. Each of the personalized mediacasts includes a variety of replaceable programming and non-programming content segments and a variety of non-replaceable programming and non-programming content segments. Replacement programming and non-programming content segments may be targeted, for example selected based in part on one or more selection criterion associated with the mediacast content consumer, or provided by the broadcaster or Webcaster. A buffering scheme may be employed to inherently adjust asynchronicity between a broadcast or Webcast and a personalized mediacast. Actual insertion of replacement programming and non-programming content segments may occur upstream of a content consumer device or at the content consumer device.

The present disclosure provides a method and system of electronically associating one or any combination of the production, balancing, editing, transmission, distribution and sale of live event “Recordings” with the sale of a “ticket” [defined to include any entrance payment / receipt, (tournament) entrance fee or logged placed bet] to or during the event, such that both or either of a ticket purchaser and / or non-ticket purchaser are able to automatically acquire a Recording or participate in interactive offerings related to the event by means of [optional] authenticated retrieval systems at a terminal device when connected to the Internet or wireless network. A method for electronically converting a balanced audience feed to the value for optimal Recording balance is also disclosed for optional integration. Distribution and / or retrieval of a Recording by patrons, non-attendee purchasers and / or licensees may occur when the Recording is embodied in a fixed medium of expression and / or when the Recording is in digital or other encoded format.

Methods and systems for integrating images with the associated text-based content signals and data about users' preferences to determine an image or user intent. Methods and implementations for monetizing these images is also described.

Delivery of content such as advertisements to audience members. Profile data is collected regarding audience members to whom advertisements may be delivered, such that a given audience member has an established profile data. Upon receiving a request to serve an advertisement to an audience member, a recognition that the target of the request is the given audience member is made. Then it is determined that a particular advertisement should be served to the given audience member. The determination includes recognition of the given audience member and corresponding selection advertisements optimized for the recognized audience member. A configurable delivery decision making mode allows pre-optimized as well as delivery time factoring for determining advertisements. Performance criteria and revenue allocation based upon data provider participation are also provided.

A promotion pricing system produces an evaluation so as to analyze, evaluate, improve, and design promotions. The promotion pricing system generates promotion price evaluations and recommendations for each promotion related to a target product, along with analyzing competing products from the same seller and its competitors. The computerized promotion pricing system includes modules for carrying out necessary analytical steps, where the modules cooperate to implement a statistical market response estimation that provide statistically stable information on customer response to promotions using either an attractive or a multiplicative model, where the model is selected dynamically. The modules include a product segmentation module, an incentive translation module, a customer segmentation module, a data aggregation module, a model selection module, a calibration module, an evaluation module, a constraints generation module, a cost structure module, an optimization module, a market channel performance module, and an alert module.

A method and system for controlling and guaranteeing a service level agreement (SLA) based on a communications outbound link bandwidth usage to a plurality of customers having electronic business activity hosted by at least one server as a server farm, includes monitoring the outbound communications bandwidth usage by each customer traffic to determine a level of service being provided to each customer with respect to the agreed service level agreement in each service cycle time per unit of time. The flow of incoming requests to each customer business activity application is controlled so as to guarantee a level of service previously agreed to the customer by queuing requests to the customer and by selectively dropping requests to the customer to guarantee the agreed service levels to the customer. The controlling process controls and guarantees each outbound link usage based service level agreement by controlling the flow of incoming requests to the at least one server.

A system and method for analyzing entertainment venue data for improved venue management, comprising conventional computer hardware and including compatible software application for compiling and manipulating event consumer and sales data as well as third party consumer demographic data, including classification of event data into a plurality of event-type clusters, correlation of consumer data and event cluster data, and performing manipulations of said data in response to user queries and displaying query results. In a preferred embodiment, associative query logic database technology is used to create a data cloud of event venue consumer and sales data as well as third-party sourced demographic data.

Apparatus and methods for providing enhanced consumer access to information sources and controllable entities. An Access device can be a stand alone device such as a DVD player in which the DVD disk contains the back-end information network. Other Access devices obtain the back-end information network from remote sources. By way of a specific example, the consumer can then view a game and interactively select every television camera located at the game venue.

The subject invention leverages determined values of auction advertisement proposals to facilitate in determining advertisement interval allocations for the proposals. The advertisement “interval” can include, but is not limited to, physical dimensions or time. Instances of the subject invention further utilize allocation algorithms and auctioning mechanisms to provide for allocation of ads of varying intervals and to improve performance of ad auctions, including employing algorithms that automate the ad interval layout to maximize revenue. Other instances of the subject invention provide pricing for the allocated intervals as well.

The present invention provides a system and method for providing an intellectual property collaboration network for the development and improvement of inventions and technology with inventors being granted equity or an ownership interest in patent arrays or companies which patent, market, license and generate revenue from the developed technology. The present invention provides a unique way of distributing equity to contributing inventors of ideas and owners of patents within the network for those technologies which are grouped and related. The system of the present invention enables inventors to submit ideas, collaborate on projects, advance technology and protect inventions through an intellectual property network which provides inventors equity in companies or patent arrays in exchange for the developments which are then patented, marketed, and licensed with revenue flowing through the companies and patent arrays back to the inventors and other contributors of the system. The system may also be used for existing and donated patents which can be marketed and licensed through the system including granting equity or ownership interest in the patent arrays or companies to owners of the existing or donated patents.

A technique for determining optimum prices of products. The apparatus includes a scenario / results processor, a demand engine, an activity based cost engine, and a price optimization engine. The scenario / results processor enables a user to prescribe an optimization scenario, and presents the optimum prices to the user, where the optimum prices are determined by execution of the optimization scenario. The demand engine models relationships between potential prices of the products and market demand for the products. The activity based cost engine estimates costs for the products based upon market demand. The price optimization engine employs the market demand and the demand chain costs to determine the optimum prices, where the optimum prices are a subset of the potential prices, and where the optimum prices maximize a merchandising performance figure of merit according to the optimization scenario.

A technology platform for the delivery of dynamic, interactive audio advertisements played in response to a consumer initiated request for information via a telephone. The platform provides advertising supported information services that are related to past responses made to a specific consumer who initiated the request. In one specific embodiment, a consumer uses a telephone is connected to a call processing system. The call processing system receives a request for information from the consumer. In determining a response, the consumer's request is examined to identify the customer that originated the request. This in turn identifies a profile file associated with the consumer, which then permits the system to determine one or more advertisement selection parameters. The customer profile may comprise one or more records of past requests from the identified customer station.

A communications network has multiple resource-allocation layers and incorporates a management structure for allocating resources to allocate resources requested by a first layer of said layers from a second of said layers. At a first layer, the management structure provides an indication to a second layer of the required resources that are to be allocated from the second layer. The second layer automatically offers the required resource together with a condition for use of those resources. This condition includes a notional price factor which is dependent on current demand. Under the control of the manager, the first layer determines if the condition for use of the offered resources is acceptable and, if so, automatically accepts the offered resources from the second layer. In a preferred embodiment, ingress to an underlying multi-wavelength transport layer of the network is controlled via a virtual port which allocates traffic to real ports one for each wavelength supported by the transport layer.

The present disclosure provides a method and system of electronically associating one or any combination of the production, balancing, editing, transmission, distribution and sale of live event “Recordings” with the sale of a “ticket” [defined to include any entrance payment / receipt, (tournament) entrance fee or logged placed bet] to or during the event, such that both or either of a ticket purchaser and / or non-ticket purchaser are able to automatically acquire a Recording or participate in interactive offerings related to the event by means of [optional] authenticated retrieval systems at a terminal device when connected to the Internet or wireless network. A method for electronically converting a balanced audience feed to the value for optimal Recording balance is also disclosed for optional integration. Distribution and / or retrieval of a Recording by patrons, non-attendee purchasers and / or licensees may occur when the Recording is embodied in a fixed medium of expression and / or when the Recording is in digital or other encoded format.

Methods of generating video streams including advertisement information sufficient to support advertisement countdown times and other functions such as advertisement auto pause functions are described. In accordance with various embodiments, advertisement duration is determined from one or more messages included in a video stream, e.g., prior to the corresponding advertising segment. A countdown timer is generated from the advertisement information and displayed along with the content of the advertisement segment. Restrictions for different subscribers may be indicated in the advertisement information messages, e.g., with some end users being permitted to fast forward or skip advertisements with other users being required to allow the full normal playback of one or more advertisement segments. The auto pause function, when activated, pauses an ad segment or set of ad segments at a predetermined time before output of the main program resumes thereby making sure none of the main program is missed.

Methods and apparatus for selecting advertisements to display to a user requesting a primary webpage is provided. Keywords related to the primary webpage are determined using internal information of the primary webpage and / or external information provided in neighboring webpages. The external information may include anchor text metadata of hyperlinks on neighboring webpages that link to the primary webpage or include the number of such hyperlinks having a same particular anchor text. Other internal and / or external information may be used to determine a list of keywords related to the primary webpage. One or more of keywords on the list are selected to represent the primary webpage according to one or more objectives. One or more advertisements are selected to be served to the user using the selected keywords. Machine learning techniques may be used to develop a model that automatedly determines keywords representing a webpage.

Technologies are described herein for providing popularity-based licensing of user-generated content. A selection of a popularity measure is received. A value of the popularity measure is determined. A price of a user-generated content item is determined based on the value of the popularity measure. A license including the price of the user-generated content item is generated.

A system and method for allocating conditional purchase offers (CPO) among a plurality of agency-based and broadcast-based sellers in a buyer-driven commerce system. In one embodiment, the system determines which agency-based or broadcast-based sellers can fulfill or satisfy the CPO and orders those sellers in a priority order. In another embodiment, the priority is determined by relative market share and number of recent opportunities to satisfy the CPO. In another embodiment, the priority is also determined by metrics and buyer information. In another embodiment, the priority is determined randomly. The system ensures that when a buyer can satisfy the CPO at multiple prices levels, the highest price level fulfills the CPO. This ensures maximum seller revenue for each CPO.

Movies are distributed to customer households in a secure format on digital media such as optical disks for playback via proprietary set-top boxes. A system operator produces movie disks in large quantities and delivers the disks to widely geographically dispersed distribution agents. Agents produce copies of the disks with unique agent identification codes embedded therein, and distribute the disks to local customers who have compatible playback devices. When customers view movies, information identifying the movie and a distribution agent who is responsible for the movie being distributed to that customer are communicated to the central computer of the system operator. The content providers are then paid royalties due and responsible distribution agents are compensated.

A new television broadcast model called a Broadcast Market Exchange (BMX) eliminates the inefficiency in spectrum usage, providing maximum flexibility in delivering content through either VHF (for fixed location receiving devices) or UHF (optimized for mobile receiving devices) transmission / propagation. In conjunction with the BMX, a wireless communications system architecture is provided to enable a broadcast augmentation channel. The augmentation channel provides supplementation of the Quality of Service (QoS) of a one way User Datagram Protocol (UDP) delivery environment. The augmentation channel may be comprised of one or more physical delivery mechanisms (wired or wireless), but can be effectively unified for increasing QoS and or scalable levels of service (additional essence) to improve the user experience.

A platform for the delivery of dynamic, interactive audio advertisements played in response to a consumer initiated request for information via a telephone. The platform invention provides advertising supported information services that are related to a geographic location associated with a response to a consumer initiated request. In one specific embodiment, at a customer station, a consumer dials an information access number and is connected to a call processing system. The call processing system receives a request for information from the consumer, and determines a response. The response is then further processed to determine a geographic location associated with the response. An advertisement is then selected that is associated with the geographic location of the response (as opposed to the geographic location specified in request, or as opposed to the geographic location of the consumer, which may not necessarily be the same).

A centralized content management system is provided. The system may balance interests among content creators, content owners, advertisers, consumers, and / or others in a content transaction chain. Media, advertising, or other types of content may have a content licensing platform embedded therein. The platform may enable a centralized clearinghouse to automatically monitor consumption of various types of content. Accordingly, the clearinghouse may use the monitored information to pay owners of consumed media content, invoice sponsors of consumed advertising content, build consumer profiles, or other things. Furthermore, content asset transaction value may be maximized throughout the chain, as content creators may establish prices for their content, advertisers may compete for ad-insertion, and consumers may establish a desired price for content using a variable pricing scheme.

A system for providing adaptive price optimization, comprising an adaptive neural network, the neural network further comprising a plurality of static and adaptive data, and a method for providing adaptive data learning behavior comprising the steps of making predictions based on data sources, comparing observed results to predicted results, and updating adaptive data sources.

A communications network has multiple resource-allocation layers and incorporates a management structure for allocating resources to allocate resources requested by a first layer of said layers from a second of said layers. At a first layer, the management structure provides an indication to a second layer of the required resources that are to be allocated from the second layer. The second layer automatically offers the required resource together with a condition for use of those resources. This condition includes a notional price factor which is dependent on current demand. Under the control of the manager, the first layer determines if the condition for use of the offered resources is acceptable and, if so, automatically accepts the offered resources from the second layer. In a preferred embodiment, ingress to an underlying multi-wavelength transport layer of the network is controlled via a virtual port which allocates traffic to real ports one for each wavelength supported by the transport layer.