Patent ID: 8352320

Claim:
A method for allocating messaging slots for use in delivering messages to participating recipients within a mobile communications network during an allocated time period, the method comprising: partitioning recipients of the advertising messages into a plurality of target profile groups wherein each recipient is allocated to more than one target profile group; determining a total number of available messaging slots for each target profile group, each messaging slot enabling the transmittal of one advertising message from an advertising management system to recipients as a SMS, MMS, or WAP message, by multiplying the total number of recipients in each target profile group by the number of messages permitted to be delivered to each participating recipient per an advertising time period, and by the allocated time period; defining a plurality of tiers of available messaging slots for each of the target profile groups, each tier containing an available inventory of messaging slots and a cost for delivering a message associated with a respective tier, wherein a lowest cost per message tier has a highest available inventory and a highest cost per message tier has a lowest available inventory, each said tier having a priority for use in scheduling the delivery of the advertising messages; receiving from an advertiser parameters defining targeted recipients and a number of messages to be delivered; and the advertising management system assigning messaging slots to transmit a message to specific recipients based on availability of messaging slots, the advertising management system initially assigning messaging slots from a lowest cost per message tier with unallocated messaging slots and then progressing to the next higher cost per message tier with available messaging slots to assign any of the number of messages to be delivered which were not assigned in the lowest cost per message tier due to all of the messaging slots in the lowest cost per message tier having been filled, and creating a transmitting schedule for messages to the allocated recipients, wherein the availability of the messaging slots in each other target profile group to which the specific recipient is allocated is decreased by a determined weight calculated based on the percentage of total recipients belonging to each target profile group.