Patent ID: 6560578
Filing Date: 2003-05-06
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
A method for determining if an advertisement is applicable to a consumer based on similarities between a consumer profile associated with the consumer and an advertisement profile associated with the advertisement, the method comprising:retrieving transaction records, wherein the transaction records include an inventory of recorded transactions of the consumer; generating the consumer profile based at least in part on the transaction records and heuristic rules associated with at least some subset of the recorded transactions within the transaction records, wherein the heuristic rules define a probabilistic measure of at least one discretionary characteristic of the consumer not directly represented in the transaction records and the consumer profile identifies at least one probabilistic discretionary characteristic of the consumer that is not directly represented in the transaction records; retrieving an advertisement profile associated with an advertisement, wherein the advertisement profile identifies at least one discretionary characteristic of an intended market for the advertisement; and correlating the consumer profile with the advertisement profile to determine the applicability of the advertisement to the consumer based on similarities of the at least one probabilistic discretionary characteristic of the consumer with the at least one discretionary characteristic for the intended market for the advertisement.