Patent ID: 8521585
Filing Date: 2013-08-27
Classification: G06Q,H04M

Abstract:
1. A method for executing a transaction related to an item or a service using a telephone, the method comprising: configuring a hardware-implemented voice portal to provide a telephonic user interface to a telephone user; storing user demographic information in one or more databases; receiving instructions from a user in the voice portal, said instruction providing information identifying the item or the service and providing a query as to a transaction to be performed, the transaction being related to the identified item or service; configuring said hardware-implemented voice portal to provide to a server system a request to execute the transaction related to the identified item or service in response to a user answer; configuring said hardware-implemented voice portal with an advertising submodule configured to selectively provide the user interface with advertisements targeted to particular users based on information about the user; configuring the advertising submodule for querying said one or more databases to determine if said one or more databases contain pre-existing criteria information for said telephone user; wherein the advertising submodule is configured for setting advertisement selection criteria based on user demographics and for returning product or service pricing and availability information from websites of various online retailers; configuring the advertising submodule for generating a first set of advertisements, said product or service pricing and availability information being retrieved as a result of searching HTML non-voice sources unassisted by voice extensions and enhancements to said HTML; configuring the advertising submodule for generating weights for said first set of advertisements based on a context of said advertisements; configuring the advertising submodule for determining whether said context is enough to accurately know what advertisement from the first set of advertisements the user most wants; rendering said returned service pricing and availability information as one or more spoken utterances; wherein the advertising submodule is configured for playing said advertisement from the first set of advertisements if said context is enough to accurately know what the user most wants; whereby the transaction is executed without the user performing a single action on a computer interface.