Patent ID: 8120803
Filing Date: 2012-02-21
Classification: G06F,G06Q

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for printing an advertisement on a printout of a print job, said apparatus comprising: a print job processing part configured to receive a print job through a network from an information terminal; a dynamic advertisement selection part configured to select one of a plurality of advertisements stored in a database based on dynamic selection criteria, after said print job processing part receives the print job, wherein said print job processing part causes a printing device to generate a printout of said print job and print the selected advertisement on at least a portion of a page of said printout after said print job processing part receives the print job, wherein the dynamic advertisement selection part selects one of the plurality of advertisements based on, at least in part, (i) a location of the information terminal from which the print job is received, and (ii) a time at which the print job is received from the information terminal, and wherein said dynamic advertisement selection part generates a pool of weighted candidate advertisements by associating each candidate advertisement of said pool of candidate advertisements with a corresponding weight value according to a price paid by a corresponding advertiser for the posting of the specific advertisement, the pool of weighted candidate advertisements is filtered to include advertisements associated with the location of the information terminal from which the print job is received, the pool of weighted candidate advertisements is filtered to include advertisements associated with the time at which the print job is received, and the dynamic advertisement selection part selects the selected advertisement at random with or without replacement to the pool, from the pool of weighted candidate advertisements, such that a higher-weighted candidate advertisement is more likely to be selected from the pool than a lower-weighted candidate advertisement.