Patent Publication Number: US-2009234734-A1

Title: Bidding on related keywords

Description:
BACKGROUND 
     As the Internet has grown, online advertising has become a popular method by which advertisers may reach consumers. For example, search engines sell ad slots on search engines to advertisers. These advertisements are typically much more targeted than print-media or TV advertising because the user performing the search indicates a current interest via a query consisting of a few keywords. The search engine may target an ad based on the user&#39;s current interest usually expressed by the keywords in the query and sometimes the history of keywords issued by the user. A similar phenomenon occurs in other online advertising, where the user conveys her intent by visiting a page or a sequence of pages related to a particular subject. For example, a user entering the query “digital camera” in the search box of a search engine, or a user reading a webpage consisting of reviews for digital cameras, is likely to be interested in digital cameras, and hence is more receptive to advertisements for digital cameras than a person flipping through the pages of the newspaper. Thus, a retailer selling digital cameras would like to bid for the query term “digital camera” so that the retailer&#39;s ad is shown for this query. 
     Frequently, however, the query terms that users employ to search for the same information are very diverse. A user looking for a digital camera may type the words “5 megapixel camera” or “digital SLR” or “Coolpix S10” into the search box, for example. In a system where the advertisers bid on query terms, an advertiser needs to predict what query terms are employed by a user interested in their product. Given that the distribution of queries is “heavy-tailed,” i.e., a large fraction of the queries made on a search engine are made by very few users (in other words, there are a large number of unique queries or keywords in the tail), it is difficult for the advertiser to predict all of the possible terms and place an individual bid on them. This leads to inefficiency when users looking for something using an uncommon query do not get advertisements that they may want to see, advertisers do not reach their potential customers, and the search engine loses revenue. 
     SUMMARY 
     Advertising slots on a search engine results page may be determined based on keywords and/or results to a user query. Advertisers may use the keywords and/or the results to the query to place their ads into the advertising slots. Rules may be applied to determine how ads are displayed or not displayed. For example, a larger set of keywords may be inferred from the initial set of keywords on which the ad provider placed her bids. This greatly increases the potential reach of an advertiser&#39;s ad campaign or a search engine provider&#39;s revenue from ad placement. In an implementation, there may be provided rule-based bidding for ad placement based on query keywords and search results associated with the query keywords. Thus, if the keywords and the associated results do not satisfy any of the rules specified by the ad provider, then she would not enter into an auction to display ads for the keywords. In one implementation, auction bids may be received from advertisers based on the relative positions of the search results. The auction bids may be assigned to bid positions according to the rule-based bidding and auction bids, and the content items placed on a results page in the order of final bids entered into the auction. 
     In another implementation, auction bids may be received from advertisers for content item placement based on query keywords and search results associated with the query keywords. Rules may be applied for the content item placement based on results satisfying a query to determine the content item placement according to the auction bids. A results page may display the content item placement. For example, if the results contain a set of pages very similar to the ad provider&#39;s page, then the ad provider may choose to not participate in the auction for displaying ads for the given query. 
     This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The foregoing summary, as well as the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments, is better understood when read in conjunction with the appended drawings. For the purpose of illustrating the embodiments, there is shown in the drawings example constructions of the embodiments; however, the embodiments are not limited to the specific methods and instrumentalities disclosed. In the drawings: 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram of an example online environment; 
         FIG. 2  is an example content page and advertisements associated with bid placement; 
         FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of an example process for presenting advertising in a content page 
         FIG. 4  is a flow diagram of an example process for defining and applying rules to query results; and 
         FIG. 5  shows an exemplary computing environment. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram of an example online environment  100 . The online environment  100  may facilitate the identification and serving of content items, e.g., web pages, advertisements, etc., to users. A computer network  110 , such as a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), the Internet, or a combination thereof, connects advertisers  102   a  and  102   b , an advertisement management system  104 , publishers  106   a  and  106   b , user devices  108   a  and  108   b , and a search engine  112 . Although only two advertisers ( 102   a  and  102   b ), two publishers ( 106   a  and  106   b ), and two user devices ( 108   a  and  108   b ) are shown, the online environment  100  may include many thousands of advertisers, publishers, and user devices. 
     In some implementations, one or more advertisers  102   a  and/or  102   b  may directly or indirectly enter, maintain, and track advertisement information in the advertising management system  104 . The advertisements may be in the form of graphical advertisements, such as banner advertisements, text only advertisements, image advertisements, audio advertisements, video advertisements, advertisements combining one of more of any of such components, etc., or any other type of electronic advertisement document. 
     A user device, such as user device  108   a , may submit a page content request  109  to a publisher or the search engine  112 . In some implementations, the page content  111  may be provided to the user device  108   a  in response to the request  109 . The page content may include advertisements provided by the advertisement management system  104 . Example user devices  108  include personal computers (PCs), mobile communication devices, television set-top boxes, etc. 
     Advertisements may also be provided from the publishers  106 . For example, one or more publishers  106   a  and/or  106   b  may submit advertisement requests for one or more advertisements to the system  104 . The system  104  responds by sending the advertisements to the requesting publisher  106   a  or  106   b  for placement on one or more of the publisher&#39;s web properties (e.g., websites and other network-distributed content). 
     Advertisements may also be provided through the use of the search engine  112 . The search engine  112  may receive queries for search results. In response, the search engine  112  may retrieve relevant search results from an index of documents (e.g., from an index of web pages). Search results may include, for example, lists of web page titles, snippets of text extracted from those web pages, and hypertext links to those web pages, and may be grouped into a predetermined number of (e.g., ten) search results. 
     The search engine  112  may also submit a request for advertisements to the system  104 . The request may include a number of advertisements desired. This number may depend on the search results, the amount of screen or page space occupied by the search results, the size and shape of the advertisements, etc. The request for advertisements may also include the query (as entered or parsed), information based on the query (such as geo-location information, whether the query came from an affiliate and an identifier of such an affiliate), and/or information associated with, or based on, the search results. Such information may include, for example, identifiers related to the search results (e.g., document identifiers or “docIDs”), scores related to the search results (e.g., information retrieval (“IR”) scores), snippets of text extracted from identified documents (e.g., web pages), full text of identified documents, feature vectors of identified documents, etc. In some implementations, IR scores may be computed from, for example, dot products of feature vectors corresponding to a query and a document, page rank scores, and/or combinations of IR scores and page rank scores, etc. 
     The search engine  112  may combine the search results with one or more of the advertisements provided by the system  104 . This combined information may then be forwarded to the user device  108  that requested the content as the page content  111 . The search results may be maintained as distinct from the advertisements, so as not to confuse the user between paid advertisements and presumably neutral search results. 
     The advertisers  102 , user devices  108 , and/or the search engine  112  may also provide usage information to the advertisement management system  104 . This usage information may include measured or observed user behavior related to advertisements that have been served, such as, for example, whether or not a conversion or a selection related to an advertisement has occurred. 
     In addition to the advertisements being selected based on content such as a search query or web page content of a publisher, the advertisements may also be selected from an auction. The advertisement management system  104  may include an auction subsystem  130 . The advertisers  102  may be permitted to select or bid an amount the advertisers are willing to pay for each click of an advertisement, e.g., a cost-per-click amount an advertiser pays when, for example, a user clicks on an advertisement. The cost-per-click can include a maximum cost-per-click, e.g., the maximum amount the advertiser is willing to pay for each click of advertisement based on a keyword. 
     For example, advertisers A, B, and C all select, or bid, a maximum cost-per-click of $0.50, $0.75, and $1.00, respectively. The maximum amount advertiser A will pay for a click is $0.50, the maximum amount advertiser B will pay is $1.00, and the maximum amount advertiser C will pay is $0.75. As such, ads associated with advertiser B will be placed higher in the ad slots than advertiser C or A. 
     In some implementations, the auction subsystem  130  may determine the position that each bid will occupy based on the results. The auction subsystem  130  may select the top k bids to occupy the bid positions, where k is, for example, the number of advertisement positions available on a webpage. Thus, ads may be placed based on the bid amounts. 
     In other implementations, rules may be applied against query keywords or the query results to determine the ads to be placed in the advertising positions or to determine the final positions of the ads relative to the available advertising slots based on the advertiser bids. Thus, an advertiser may specify a rule such that “if the keyword is X, and if the results are Y, then I want to bid so much for the keywords associated with the results I am interested in.” For example, an advertiser may be interested in results that include “Canon  850 ” when a user enters a query containing the keywords “digital camera.” When the “Canon  850 ” is included in the results, the advertiser may wish to be ranked number one in the listing of ads on the query results page. The advertiser may pay a higher bid amount for the number one ranking as part of specifying the rule. Of course, there is no guarantee that the ad provider always gets her ad to be placed in the desired position. This is because there could be another provider who has similar constraints and placed a higher (winning) bid. 
     In other implementations, the advertiser may specify that the advertiser&#39;s bid for ad placement is not to be included in the auction for ad space/placement unless certain query terms and/or certain results exist. For example, if “digital camera” is in the query, and “Nikon” is in the result, the advertiser will pay 50 cents per click, otherwise the advertiser does not want their ad placed. 
     In some implementations, the advertiser may desire to have an ad placed more prominently with respect to certain competitors. Thus, if the results page has “Nikon,” the advertiser may pay to have ads placed ahead of Nikon Corp. on the advertisers&#39; pane and thus bid higher on the auction for the query keywords. 
     In some implementations, an advertiser may specify that their ad is not shown based on aspects of the results and/or query search terms. For example, a rule may be specified such as “do not show an ad if any of the results are scandalous.” Thus, an advertiser may specify where ads are placed, or not, based on the results sets. Another scenario is when the search results are already ‘rich’ enough to satisfy the user&#39;s request that the user is unlikely to click on any ad. In such a case, the ad provider might choose to either stay out of the auction or bid a very low price. 
     In other implementations, an advertiser may bid on a particular sequence of keywords. If a user enters “Nikon digital SLR camera,” the advertiser may bid to place an ad on the results page that satisfies the query. However, if the user enters “Canon digital SLR camera,” the advertiser&#39;s ad may not be placed on the results page in accordance with a rule. 
     In the other implementations, two queries may be tagged as similar if they share a lot documents on which people clicked. Thus, if the ad provider bid on keywords belonging to one of the queries, the keywords from all related queries will also be presented as alternatives to the ad provider. 
       FIG. 2  is an example screen shot depicting a content page  200  containing one or more advertisements  202 ,  204 ,  206 . Some of the advertisements, e.g.,  202 , may be slots that are not associated with a keyword bidding process, whereas other advertisements  204 ,  206  may be slots associated with a keywords bid upon by advertisers. Thus, if a user entered a query “SLR digital cameras” advertisement  204  may be associated with a first advertiser that has bid on keywords “cameras.” Advertisement  206  is associated with a second advertiser that has bid more generally on keywords “digital cameras.” The relative ranking may be based on the bid amount the first advertiser and the second advertiser placed for their respective keywords, or rules applied to the ad placement, as described herein. 
     Although only three advertisements,  202 ,  204 ,  206  are shown in  FIG. 2 , additional advertisements could also be presented on the content page. Additionally, while the advertisements shown in  FIG. 2  are in text advertisements, other advertisement types could also be used, e.g., an advertisement with graphics, banner ads, audio ads, video ads, etc. 
       FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of an example process  300  for presenting advertising in a results page. The process  300  may, for example, be implemented in the advertisement management system  104  of  FIG. 1 , or in some other hardware and software computing device. 
     At  302 , bids from an advertiser for one or more keywords are determined. For example, advertisers may bid specific amounts on keywords in order to place ads into advertising slots on a results page. The auction subsystem  130  may determine which ads are to be placed in a results page based on the bids placed by the advertisers. 
     At  304 , rules may be determined for placing advertising. For example, the auction subsystem  130  may take into account rules that specify how advertisers would like their ads placed, or not, in the results page. 
     At  306 , a query is received. The search engine  112  may receive a query from a user containing one or more keywords. At  308 , results satisfying the query are determined. The search engine  112  may search a database of information to determine a result set that satisfies the query using any known ranking algorithm. 
     At  310 , it is determined what ads are to be placed on the results page. The auction subsystem  130  may analyze the advertiser bids on keyword(s) and rules with respect to the query terms and/or results to determine which advertiser ads will be placed on the results page, as noted above. At  312 , the advertisements in the results page are presented. The results page may be communicated by the search engine  112  as the page content  111  to the user device  108   a  or  108   b  for display in e.g., a web browser. 
     While the advertisements described are directed to online advertisements, the methods and systems may be used for advertisements outside of an online context. For example, the advertisements may be placed on billboards, in magazines, books, video games, and may be tracked in the same manner as described above. The advertisements may also be audio advertisements such as advertisements on the radio. 
       FIG. 4  is a flow diagram of an example process  400  for defining and applying rules to query results. At  402 , rules are defined to be applied to query results. These rules may be defined on a per advertiser basis, on a domain name basis, or on an IP-block basis for the query results obtained. The rules may determine the ads to be placed in the advertising positions or may determine the final positions of the ads relative to the available advertising slots based on the advertiser bids, and include but are not limited to:
         1. A rule to specify if the keyword is X, and if the results are Y, then bid Z for the keywords associated with the results.   2. A rule to specify that the advertiser&#39;s bid for ad placement is not to be included in the auction for ad space/placement unless certain query terms and/or certain results exist.   3. A rule to have an ad placed more prominently with respect to certain competitors.   4. A rule to specify that an ad is not to be shown based on aspects of the results and/or query search terms.   5. A rule to bid on a particular sequence of keywords.   6. A rule to tag two queries as similar if they share a large amount of common documents selected by users.   7. A rule that specifies bid placement for inferred keywords.   8. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if a particular URL is in the results.   9. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if some page from a particular domain is in the results.   10. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if a particular URL is in the top k slots for some specified k.   11. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if some page from a particular domain is in the top k results for some specified k.   12. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered only if a certain fraction of the top k pages contain a particular keyword at least a specified number of times, for some specified k.   13. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if a snippet of the top result contains a given set of terms.   14. A rule where the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if the title of the top result contains a given set of terms.       
     At  402 , any predicate of the ordered list or search results may be used. This predicate may depend on the URL, the domain, the title of the document, a snippet, the content of the page, etc. The advertiser may combine these predicates using Boolean operators, such as ANDs and NOTs and ORs. For example, the advertiser may specify that her bid be considered if a particular URL is in the top three positions of the results and a particular domain is not in top five results, OR if five out of the top ten pages contain a particular word (e.g., the word “Coolpix”) at least three times each. 
     At  404 , the query results are received. This is similar to  308 , and the search engine  112  may search a database of information to determine a result set that satisfies the query using any known ranking algorithm. At  406 , the rules defined at  402  are applied to the query results at  404 . Applying the rules determines how, e.g., advertisers will bid on ad placement related to the query results. At  408 , if the results satisfy the rules, then participation in the auction is performed with a bid defined by the rule(s). Based on the results at  406 , the advertiser may bid in the auction as defined by the rules. Final placement of the ads will depend on the bidding process. 
     Exemplary Computing Arrangement 
       FIG. 5  shows an exemplary computing environment in which example implementations and aspects may be implemented. The computing system environment is only one example of a suitable computing environment and is not intended to suggest any limitation as to the scope of use or functionality. 
     Numerous other general purpose or special purpose computing system environments or configurations may be used. Examples of well known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may be suitable for use include, but are not limited to, PCs, server computers, handheld or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, embedded systems, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like. 
     Computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, being executed by a computer may be used. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Distributed computing environments may be used where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network or other data transmission medium. In a distributed computing environment, program modules and other data may be located in both local and remote computer storage media including memory storage devices. 
     With reference to  FIG. 5 , an exemplary system for implementing aspects described herein includes a computing device, such as computing device  500 . In its most basic configuration, computing device  500  typically includes at least one processing unit  502  and memory  504 . Depending on the exact configuration and type of computing device, memory  504  may be volatile (such as random access memory (RAM)), non-volatile (such as read-only memory (ROM), flash memory, etc.), or some combination of the two. This most basic configuration is illustrated in  FIG. 5  by dashed line  506 . 
     Computing device  500  may have additional features/functionality. For example, computing device  500  may include additional storage (removable and/or non-removable) including, but not limited to, magnetic or optical disks or tape. Such additional storage is illustrated in  FIG. 5  by removable storage  508  and non-removable storage  510 . 
     Computing device  500  typically includes a variety of computer readable media. Computer readable media may be any available media that may be accessed by device  500  and includes both volatile and non-volatile media, removable and non-removable media. 
     Computer storage media include volatile and non-volatile, and removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. Memory  504 , removable storage  508 , and non-removable storage  510  are all examples of computer storage media. Computer storage media include, but are not limited to, RAM, ROM, electrically erasable program read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which may be used to store the desired information and which may be accessed by computing device  500 . Any such computer storage media may be part of computing device  500 . 
     Computing device  500  may contain communications connection(s)  512  that allow the device to communicate with other devices. Computing device  500  may also have input device(s)  514  such as a keyboard, mouse, pen, voice input device, touch input device, etc. Output device(s)  516  such as a display, speakers, printer, etc. may also be included. All these devices are well known in the art and need not be discussed at length here. 
     It should be understood that the various techniques described herein may be implemented in connection with hardware or software or, where appropriate, with a combination of both. Thus, the methods and apparatus of the presently disclosed subject matter, or certain aspects or portions thereof, may take the form of program code (i.e., instructions) embodied in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, hard drives, or any other machine-readable storage medium where, when the program code is loaded into and executed by a machine, such as a computer, the machine becomes an apparatus for practicing the presently disclosed subject matter. 
     Although exemplary implementations may refer to utilizing aspects of the presently disclosed subject matter in the context of one or more stand-alone computer systems, the subject matter is not so limited, but rather may be implemented in connection with any computing environment, such as a network or distributed computing environment. Still further, aspects of the presently disclosed subject matter may be implemented in or across a plurality of processing chips or devices, and storage may similarly be affected across a plurality of devices. Such devices might include PCs, network servers, and handheld devices, for example. 
     Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.