MARKETING CHANNEL USING PROFILE SELLING

Abstract: A system for providing information and services to remote user terminals upon request therefrom includes a provider node in communication with the remote user terminals and in communication with other nodes including advertisers. Advertisers initiate transmission of advertising messages for display on the remote user terminals. The provider node maintains profile information specifying each user's interests and needs. Under control of the profile information, each advertising message is selectively sent to users whose interests and needs are in accordance with the contents of the advertising message.

Description: Marketing Channel Using Profile Selling BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to the distribution of advertising to users of a data network, and more particularly to the selective distribution of advertising according to user profile information. 2. Description of the Related Art It is becoming commonplace for persons to rely on electronic data service providers for information and services. Information might include reference information as might be found in a library, or commercial information such as flight schedules or the price and availability of goods. Services might include the purchase of goods, or the purchase of accommodations according to information, such as the purchase of tickets for a particular flight itinerary selected from a presentation of flight schedules. A user typically employs a terminal device connected via some communication means to a service provider (e. g., in a fixed station such as a desktop computer connected via a copper telephone line, or a mobile station such as a laptop computer, mobile telephone device or a palmtop device connected via a wireless connection). The service provider then provides information and services to the user, either from the service provider's own resources or from the resources of yet other providers to which the user's service provider connects via communications links (said other providers being referred to herein as"external providers"). The establishment and operation of the providers and underlying communication means incurs costs. Typically, these costs are met largely by imposing subscription charges upon users for access to service providers. Also, a service provider may partially defray these costs by including advertising messages in the information displays provided to users, and charging advertisers for presenting their advertising. Advertisers hope to maximize the return on such charges. One way they seek to do this is to target advertising to groups of users identified as more likely to purchase the goods or services advertised. In television advertising, for example, an advertiser of a product suitable for consumption by a particular demographic group (e. g., young single men) would be more inclined to purchase advertising time on a program known to attract viewers from that demographic group. Similarly, in advertising to be presented in displays in information systems, it would be of value to advertisers to present users with advertising specific to the proclivities of the users'purchasing patterns. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to present in the displays furnished to users of information systems advertisements specifically targeted to their needs and interests. According to one aspect of the invention, a service provider node captures profile information for each user reflecting the user's interests and probable needs. The profile information is summarized into predetermined categories. The summary is provided to advertisers, who operate advertiser nodes connected to the service provider nodes. The advertiser nodes transmit advertising messages targeted to particular groups of users according to the profile information. In another aspect of the invention, advertiser nodes transmit to service provider nodes advertising messages each associated with a tag specifying the nature of the advertising message. The service provider node forwards advertising messages selectively to users according to correspondence between the tag and a user's profile. Other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed solely for purposes of illustration and not as a definition of the limits of the invention, for which reference should be made to the appended claims. It should be further understood that the drawings are merely intended to conceptually illustrate the structures and procedures described herein. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS In the drawings, wherein like reference numerals denote similar elements: Fig. 1 depicts a system embodying the present invention; and Fig. 2 depicts a system containing an alternative embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENTLY PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Fig. 1 depicts an information system. One or more user terminals 200 may connect to a service provider 100. (There may be many service providers 100 to which user terminals 200 may connect, only one of which is depicted.) By means well known in the art and not depicted in Fig. 1, users at terminals 200 may enter requests for information or services; provider 100 may respond to such requests from its own resources, or may contact certain ones of external providers 300 to obtain responses from the external providers'resources; responses are typically provided to users on display screens on terminals 200. One or more of the external providers 300 may be advertisers 300a. As known in the prior art, provider 100 may accept advertising from advertisers 300a for presentation to users at terminals 200, and may charge advertisers 300a for this service. According to the present invention, provider 100 accumulates profile information 400 for users, indicating the areas of interest or need for each user. Such information may be obtained according to such factors as: 1. Kinds of service or information to which the user has subscribed. Those skilled in the art realize that this typically creates data structures for guidance of provider 100's software, from which user profile data 400 may be readily extracted. 2. Questionnaire information provided by the user at time of subscription (e. g., age, sex, interests, etc.) may be inserted directly into user profile information 400. 3. Information inferred from a user's actions on the system may be captured on the fly and recorded in user profile data 400 (e. g., a user who makes several information searches pertaining to classical music may be deemed to be a likely purchaser of recordings; a user's commuting or travel routines may be inferred from recurring patterns of locations at which a user originates or accepts calls). 4. User profile data 400 may be inferred from a user's intent (e. g., a user who maintains an appointment calendar with provider 100 and who indicates therein that he has scheduled a vacation may be deemed interested in transportation services; a user who purchases transportation to a particular locale may deemed interested in tourist services in that locale). In the embodiment of the present invention depicted in Fig. 1, provider 100 includes profile summarizer 110, which derives group profile information 450 from user profile information 400. For example, profile information 400 may be summarized according to the number of users who fall into each of several predetermined groups. Thus, a profile group file 450 might indicate, inter alia, that a provider 100 has among its users 872 men, 843 women, 152 people interested in classical music, and three people interested in paleontology. (A particular user might be reflected in several of the groups.) Copies of group profile information 450 are then provided to advertisers 300a. An advertiser 300a, in response to profile group information 450, might transmit to provider 100 advertising messages targeted to particular groups (e. g., a message for all the men and a message for all the classical music devotees). Each advertising message thus reaches only those users predicted to be most likely to respond positively to it. Profile group information 450 may be sold to advertisers 300a for a flat rate, or advertisers 300a may be may be billed incrementally for actual advertisements, or the billing may be according to a combination of both. Billing rates may be indexed to the anticipated efficacy of advertisements according to the population reflected in the profile group information 450. Bill rates under such an indexing scheme may be determined by service provider 100, or by market forces by auctioning profile group information 450. It is not necessary to divulge to advertisers the identities of users to practice the invention, since whole groups are identified but not individuals. Those skilled in the art will realize that provider 100 can have means of dealing with situations where more messages are targeted for a particular user than can be displayed to him at once, as by queuing messages, or by discarding some messages with a corresponding adjustment to the charges billed to the advertiser. An alternative embodiment of the invention is depicted in Fig. 2. As in the embodiment shown in Fig. 1, provider 100 maintains user profiles 400. In this embodiment, however, no profile information is provided to an advertiser 300a. Advertiser 300a transmits to provider 100 advertising messages each of which has associated with it one or more tags descriptive of the content of the advertising message. Provider 100 in this embodiment includes an advertising message dispatcher 150. In accordance with the tags associated with each advertising message received from an advertiser 300a and according to user profiles 400, dispatcher 150 dispatches each message only to those users who are qualified according to predetermined rules. It will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art how to correlate advertising message tags with user profile information to dispatch advertising messages selectively to users. Advertisements may thus be routed to particular users or groups of users without disclosing user's identities to the advertiser. In the embodiment of Fig. 2, just as in the embodiment of Fig. 1, an advertiser 300a is typically billed for advertisements sent to subscribers 200. Billing rates may be a flat rate for the right to send advertisements, or an incremental rate for advertisements actually sent. The rate may be set by service provider 100, or by market forces by auctioning the right to send advertisements among a plurality of advertisers 300a. Thus, while there have shown and described and pointed out fundamental novel features of the invention as applied to a preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood that various omissions and substitutions and changes in the form and details of the devices illustrated, and in their operation, may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the invention. For example, it is expressly intended that all combinations of those elements and/or method steps which perform substantially the same function in substantially the same way to achieve the same results are within the scope of the invention. Moreover, it should be recognized that structures and/or elements and/or method steps shown and/or described in connection with any disclosed form or embodiment of the invention may be incorporated in any other disclosed or described or suggested form or embodiment as a general matter of design choice. It is the intention, therefore, to be limited only as indicated by the scope of the claims appended hereto.

Claims: CLAIMS 1. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminals and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, means for capturing a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; means for deriving from the user profile a group profile summary specifying numbers of users in each of predetermined groups according to interests and probable needs; and means in the advertiser nodes responsive to the group profile summary for transmitting advertising messages to the service provider nodes each for forwarding to users in certain of the predetermined groups. 2. The information system of claim 1, wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 3. The information system of claim 1, wherein the means for capturing said user profile captures at least one of: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's future plans. 4. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminals and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, capture logic configured to capture a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; summarization logic for deriving from the user profile a group profile summary specifying numbers of users in each of predetermined groups according to interests and probable needs; and selection logic in the advertiser nodes responsive to the group profile summary for transmitting advertising messages to the service provider nodes each for forwarding to users in certain of the predetermined groups. 5. The information system of claim 4, wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 6. The information system of claim 4, wherein the capture logic captures at least one of: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's future plans. 7. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminals and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, a method comprising: capturing a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; deriving from the user profile a group profile summary specifying numbers of users in each of predetermined groups according to interests and probable needs; and transmitting advertising messages from the advertiser node to the service provider nodes selectively according to the group profile summary, each message for forwarding to users in certain of the predetermined groups. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 9. The method of claim 7, wherein the step of capturing said user profile comprises capturing at least one of: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's intentions. 10. The method of claim 7 wherein a proprietor of an advertiser node remuniertes a proprietor of a service provider node for transmission of advertising messages to users. 11. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminais and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, means for capturing a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; means in the advertiser nodes for associating with each advertising message an indication of its content; and means for selectively passing advertising messages to user terminals according to correspondence between said indication of an advertising message's content and said profile of a user's interests and probable needs. 12. The information system of claim 11, wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 13. The information system of claim 11, wherein the means for capturing said user profile captures at least: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's future plans. 14. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminals and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, capture logic for capturing a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; association logic in the advertiser nodes for associating with each advertising message an indication of its content; and selection logic for selectively passing advertising messages to user terminals according to correspondence between said indication of an advertising message's content and said profile of a user's interests and probable needs. 15. The information system of claim 14 wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 16. The information system of claim 14 wherein the capture logic captures at least one of: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's future plans. 17. In an information system comprising one or more service provider nodes each operatively connected to one or more user terminals and providing sensible indications of information to said user terminals including advertising messages initiated by advertiser nodes operatively connected to the service provider nodes, a method comprising: capturing a user profile reflecting each user's interests and probable needs; associating in the advertiser nodes each advertising message with an indication of its content; and selectively passing advertising messages to user terminals according to correspondence between said indication of an advertising message's content and said profile of a user's interests and probable needs. 18. The method of claim 17, wherein a user terminal is a mobile station. 19. The method of claim 17, wherein the means for capturing said user profile captures at least: kinds of service to which a user subscribes; questionnaire information provided by a user; categories of requests made of the information system by a user; and indications of a user's future plans. 20. The method of claim 17 wherein a proprietor of an advertiser node remunerates a proprietor of a service provider node for transmission of advertising messages to users.

Inventors: VAENSKAE MARKO, VAENSKAE, MARKO
Applicants: NOKIA CORP, NOKIA INC, NOKIA CORPORATION, NOKIA INC.
Application year: 2001
Main classification: G06F17
IPC codes: G06Q30