U.S. patent application number 16/418665 was filed with the patent office on 2019-09-05 for information-market system.
The applicant listed for this patent is Douglas R. Cloud. Invention is credited to Douglas R. Cloud.
Application Number | 20190272566 16/418665 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 48136740 |
Filed Date | 2019-09-05 |
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United States Patent
Application |
20190272566 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Cloud; Douglas R. |
September 5, 2019 |
INFORMATION-MARKET SYSTEM
Abstract
The current application is directed to methods and systems that
provide an information market in which information producers sell
information, advertisers purchase consumption of advertisements,
and information consumers purchase information from information
producers and receive compensation from advertisers through
automated and semi-automated information-market transactions. The
information market provides a transaction-based marketplace for the
provision and consumption of information in much the same way as
various types of financial markets provide a marketplace for
cost-effective exchange of goods and services. The
transaction-based information market provides flexibility and
control to both information providers and information consumers as
well as the cost efficiency of a transaction-based information
marketplace.
Inventors: |
Cloud; Douglas R.; (Tacoma,
WA) |
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Applicant: |
Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Type |
Cloud; Douglas R. |
Tacoma |
WA |
US |
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Family ID: |
48136740 |
Appl. No.: |
16/418665 |
Filed: |
May 21, 2019 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
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13710105 |
Dec 10, 2012 |
10296947 |
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16418665 |
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12001052 |
Nov 28, 2007 |
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13710105 |
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Current U.S.
Class: |
1/1 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 30/0277 20130101;
G06Q 30/0275 20130101; G06Q 30/0283 20130101; G06Q 30/0273
20130101; G06Q 30/02 20130101 |
International
Class: |
G06Q 30/02 20060101
G06Q030/02 |
Claims
1. An electronic information market system comprising: multiple
computer systems, each of which has one or more processors, one or
more memories, network-communications subsystems, and computer
instructions, stored in one or more of the one or more memories,
that control the computer system to cooperate with other of the
multiple computer systems to negotiate on the behalf of user
processor-controlled devices with advertiser computer systems,
which transmit electronically encoded advertisements to remote
computer systems and other processor-controlled devices, to
transmit electronically encoded advertisements to user
processor-controlled devices; aggregate electronically encoded
advertisements and information received from the advertiser
computer systems and from content-provider computer systems that
transmit electronically encoded information to remote computer
systems and other processor-controlled devices; and transmit
aggregated electronically encoded advertisements and information to
user computers.
Description
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] This application is a continuation of application Ser. No.
13/710,105, filed Dec. 10, 2012, issued May 21, 2019, U.S. Pat. No.
10,296,947, which is a continuation-in-part to application Ser. No.
12/001,052, filed Nov. 28, 2007, abandoned.
TECHNICAL FIELD
[0002] The current application is directed to distribution of
information through electronic communications, including the
Internet and, in particular, methods and systems that implement an
information market that provides for automated exchange of
information and value within the information market.
BACKGROUND
[0003] The distribution of information has been a fundamental
activity in human societies for many thousands of years. Up until
the 1400s, information distribution was primarily carried out
orally and through hand-written documents and texts. The invention
of the printing press greatly accelerated information distribution
and information exchange. In the 1800s and 1900s, development of
electronic communications, including the telegraph, telephone, and
broadcast technologies, including radio and television, vastly
increased the capacity for information exchange and vastly
decreased the cost of distributing information. Beginning in the
1950s, the development of electronic computers and computer-driven
electronic communications, including various types of
high-bandwidth electronic and optical communications media
represented another leap in the speed, capacity, and
cost-effectiveness of information distribution, ultimately spawning
the Internet and Internet-associated methods and systems for
distribution of a variety of different types of information, from
text and graphics to streaming video, to a wide variety of
different types of processor-controlled devices, including
electronic laptops, notebooks, tablets and pads, personal
computers, mobile phones, and a host of other electronic devices. A
modern grade school student, as one example, can currently access,
through using an inexpensive personal computer, far more
information and a greater diversity of information than was
available, at any price, to anyone in the 1960s and 1970s.
[0004] While the sheer volume of accessible information and the
speed and cost-effectiveness by which information can be accessed
have increased with the development of the Internet and
Internet-associated methods for information distribution and
exchange, many of the current models for information distribution
are based on decades-old broadcast-media techniques and paradigms,
with limited cost efficiencies. Information providers and
information consumers, as well as those who design, develop,
manufacture, and sell communications systems and computers,
continue to seek new methods and systems for cost-effective
information distribution and information exchange.
SUMMARY
[0005] The current application is directed to methods and systems
that provide an information market in which information producers
sell information, advertisers purchase consumption of
advertisements, and information consumers purchase information from
information producers and receive compensation from advertisers
through automated and semi-automated information-market
transactions. The information market provides a transaction-based
marketplace for the provision and consumption of information in
much the same way as various types of financial markets provide a
marketplace for cost-effective exchange of goods and services. The
transaction-based information market provides flexibility and
control to both information providers and information consumers as
well as the cost efficiency of a transaction-based information
marketplace. In additional implementations, individual pricing for
goods and services may be provided to consumers in additional types
of markets, including traditional retail markets.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0006] FIG. 1 provides a high-level architectural overview of
personal computers, servers, and other such processor-controlled
information-processing and communications devices and systems.
[0007] FIG. 2 illustrates typical electronic information provision
and information consumption.
[0008] FIG. 3 illustrates a typical displayed web page through
which an information consumer receives information.
[0009] FIG. 4 illustrates specification of a displayed web page by
an HTML file.
[0010] FIG. 5 illustrates, using a control-flow-diagram-like
illustration, the process by which a web browser renders a web page
for display.
[0011] FIG. 6 illustrates one implementation of the electronic
information market disclosed in the current application.
[0012] FIG. 7 illustrates an example transaction certificate.
[0013] FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a user-preferences data
structure that is exchanged at certain times among participants of
an electronic information market.
[0014] FIG. 9 illustrates an additional data structure that may be
exchanged between participants and components of an information
market.
[0015] FIG. 10 illustrate internal components of the
aggregator-service component (614 in FIG. 6) and general
operational characteristics of the aggregator-service component of
an information market.
[0016] FIG. 11 illustrates an additional component of the
information market not illustrated in FIG. 6.
[0017] FIGS. 12A-B illustrate a "new session" routine called within
a web browser when the web browser is launched on a user's
computational device.
[0018] FIGS. 13A-B illustrate a "get certificate" routine called in
step 1208 in FIG. 12A.
[0019] FIGS. 14A-B illustrate an access transaction by which a
browser participating in the information market accesses content on
behalf of an information-market user.
[0020] FIG. 15 illustrates a transaction carried out between a
negotiator component of the information market and an
advertiser.
[0021] FIGS. 16A-D illustrate operation of the aggregator component
or components of an information market.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0022] The current application is directed to methods and systems
that implement an information market in which information providers
and information consumers conduct information-provision and
information-consumption transactions. The information market
provides similar efficiencies in information exchange that are
provided by traditional financial markets for the exchange of goods
and services. The information market to which the current
application is directed is generally implemented within a large
variety of different types of processor-controlled
information-processing and communications methods and systems,
including personal computers, mobile phones, server computers, and
many other types of devices and systems.
[0023] FIG. 1 provides a high-level architectural overview of
personal computers, servers, and other such processor-controlled
information-processing and communications devices and systems. The
computer system contains one or multiple central processing units
("CPUs") 102-105, one or more electronic memories 108
interconnected with the CPUs by a CPU/memory-subsystem bus 110 or
multiple busses, a first bridge 112 that interconnects the
CPU/memory-subsystem bus 110 with additional busses 114 and 116, or
other types of high-speed interconnection media, including
multiple, high-speed serial interconnects. These busses or serial
interconnections, in turn, connect the CPUs and memory with
specialized processors, such as a graphics processor 118, and with
one or more additional bridges 120, which are interconnected with
high-speed serial links or with multiple controllers 122-127, such
as controller 127, that provide access to various different types
of mass-storage devices 128, electronic displays, input devices,
and other such components, subcomponents, and computational
resources.
[0024] FIG. 2 illustrates typical electronic information provision
and information consumption. In FIG. 2, a web page 202 is displayed
on the display device 204 of a personal computer 206. The web page
generally contains a variety of different types of information,
including text, photographs and graphics, animations, and even
streaming video. The displayed web page 202 is generated by a
web-browser application 208 that executes within an execution
environment provided by an operating system 210 executing on a
processor or processors within the personal computer 206. The
information used by the web browser to generate the displayed web
page is obtained by the web browser from generally remote
computational entities using the hypertext transfer protocol
("HTTP"), the real-time streaming protocol ("RTSP"), and other such
information-transfer protocols that are generally implemented above
the well-known transmission control protocol ("TCP") and Internet
protocol ("IP"). In the HTTP protocol, commonly used for providing
the information from which displayed web pages are generated by web
browsers, the web browser accesses information by specifying a
universal resource locator ("URL") or, more generally, a universal
resource identifier ("URT"), for each discrete information entity,
such as a file, in an HTTP GET request to a remote server 212
interconnected with the web browser via the Internet 214 and
receives the requested file or other information entity from the
remote server according to the client/server HTTP protocol. The
RTSP protocol is used to request and receive streaming video for
display through a media-player application program that executes in
parallel with the web browser. The RTSP protocol allows the
rendering and display of a video to commence prior to the
completion of transfer of the corresponding video file from a
remote video-data source to the media player, with the video
rendered and displayed as video data streams over the Internet from
the remote video-data source to the media player on a user's
computer or other video-rendering device.
[0025] FIG. 3 illustrates a typical displayed web page through
which an information consumer receives information. The displayed
web page 302 may be displayed over the entire display screen, as in
FIG. 3, or over a window that represents a portion of the display
screen. The displayed web page may include multiple subregions,
including, in the web page shown in FIG. 3, multiple regions
304-309 in which advertisements are displayed, a main region in
which content is rendered and displayed to the user 310, and a
video-display region 312 in which a user can view a streaming
video, such as a film or television program with embedded video
advertising.
[0026] FIG. 4 illustrates specification of a displayed web page by
an HTML file. In many cases, web pages are specified and described
by hypertext markup language ("HTML") files. FIG. 4 shows a
high-level representation of an HTML file 402 that specifies the
web page 302 discussed above with reference to FIG. 3. An HTML file
is hierarchically organized into hierarchical sections, each
section demarcated by opening and closing tags. For example, the
web page, as a whole, is described by the highest-level section
demarcated by an initial tag 404 and ending tag 406. The tags
generally include symbolic encodings of various HTML attributes and
additional text, not shown in FIG. 4 for the sake of brevity and
clarity in illustration. A detailed description of the HTML
web-page specification language can be found in any of various
textbooks and on-line references, including Wikipedia. Each section
of the web page is generally specified by a lower-level
tag-demarcated section, such as the section bracketed by tags 408
and 410 corresponding to advertisement 304. Often, the content for
the subsections, such as advertisement 304, are specified by one or
more additional HTML files referenced by a hyperlink, such as
hyperlink 412, within the HTML file 402 specifying the web page.
These hyperlinks generally include URIs or URLs, not shown in FIG.
4, allowing the web browser to obtain the files through additional
HTTP-based client/server transactions.
[0027] FIG. 5 illustrates, using a control-flow-diagram-like
illustration, the process by which a web browser renders a web page
for display. In FIG. 5, as in many additional figures discussed
below, interaction between two different entities is illustrated
with the steps of a first entity located to the left of a central
vertical line 502 and steps associated with a second entity located
on the right of the central vertical line 502. In the case shown in
FIG. 5, the left-hand portion of the figure shows steps carried out
by a web browser executing on a user's personal computer and steps
on the right-hand side of the figure correspond to steps carried
out by one or more servers. In step 504, a user inputs a mouse
click to a displayed hyperlink on a web page, which is transmitted
to, and received by, the web browser. In response, in step 506, the
web browser directs an HTTP request for an HTML file specified by a
URL associated with the displayed hyperlink. That URL can be found
in an encoding of the hyperlink within the corresponding HTLM file
for the displayed web page. In general, access of a hyperlinked web
page involves a series of computational and communications
activities. A web browser accesses, using the URL, a distributed
name server ("DNS server") to obtain the IP address for a server
that serves the HTML file and then transmits an HTTP GET request to
that server. All of these underlying activities are represented, in
FIG. 5 and subsequently described figures, by horizontal arrows,
such as horizontal arrow 508. When the server receives the HTTP GET
request 510, the server uses the URL embedded in the GET request to
find and return the requested HTML file to the requesting web
browser 512 via the HTTP client/server protocol. The web browser
receives the HTML file in step 514 and begins rendering the file
for display by generating display commands and display data from
the HTML directives within the HTML file. During rendering of the
HTML file, the web browser may encounter embedded hyperlinks, as in
step 516. When the web browser encounters an embedded hyperlink,
the web browser prepares and directs an HTTP request for the HTML
file described by a URL encoded in the embedded hyperlink, in step
518, to a remote server which receives the request, in step 520 and
returns the requested file in step 522. The embedded hyperlinks
reference files stored in either the same server from which the
HTML file describing the web page is received or from other remote
servers. In general, the display commands and displayed data
generated by the web browser as the HTML file is processed are
executed via system calls to the operating system and other
executables within the personal computer to generate the web-page
image displayed to the user on the display device.
[0028] Information markets to which the current application is
directed may distribute information electronically via HTTP, RTSP,
and web pages, but may also employ many other information
distribution, information rendering, and information display
technologies. The distribution of information electronically via
HTTP, RTSP, and web pages is used in the current discussion as an
example of many possible information distribution, rendering, and
display technologies on which information markets can be based.
Some other technologies include distribution of books and magazines
to eReaders and distribution of recorded music by electronic file
transfer to music-player applications.
[0029] Currently, advertisements are included along with content on
web pages by content providers, with web-page viewers having no
direct control over the advertisements that they receive. In most
cases, content providers provide content at no cost to viewers, but
are compensated for advertising space they provide to advertisers
on their web pages. In many cases, sophisticated content providers
and advertisers may cooperate to include targeted advertising
within web pages based on information accumulated, over time, about
particular users, with the users identified by the IP address from
which requests for web pages are received and by other means. It is
no accident that web-browser users are commonly presented with
advertisements related to goods and services they have recently
researched on the Internet. However, the targeting of advertising
is generally relatively crude because both content providers and
advertisers lack detailed market-segment information about
individual web-page readers.
[0030] In certain cases, users pay subscriptions to content
providers in order to receive content from particular web sites or
other information-distribution services. However, in general,
information is provided at no cost to users on the Internet in the
hopes that advertising included in web pages will be sufficiently
attractive to users for the users to input mouse clicks to navigate
through hyperlinks included in advertising to obtain additional
information about advertised products and services. These
click-through events are detectable by advertisers and the basis
for many compensation schemes by which content providers receive
revenues from advertisers.
[0031] Both subscription-based information provision and
advertiser-compensated information provision may represent
relatively inefficient information distribution from the standpoint
of information providers. In the case of subscription-based
information provision, it may be difficult for content providers to
determine subscription rates in order to maximize income and, in
general, subscription rates are commonly applied to all subscribers
and potential subscribers. In the case of advertiser-compensated
information provision, despite efforts for targeting
advertisements, the rate of click-through events associated with
advertisement-embedded hyperlinks may be highly variable and may be
significantly lower than could be achieved were precise targeting
possible. Moreover, there is generally a large population of
Internet users who completely disregard advertising and therefore
receive the benefits of information provided by information
providers without paying anything for them.
[0032] In many additional types of markets, retailers, distributors
of goods and services, and others who seek to provide goods and
services to consumers face significant challenges in attempting to
evaluate particular potential purchasers' ability and desire to
purchase the offered goods and services. Providers of goods and
services may waste significant time attempting to market products
to those who are insufficiently interested in the offered products
to purchase them, even at discounted prices. Providers of goods and
services may also waste significant opportunities by failing to
recognize potential consumers who would purchase products were a
suitable price offered. In many cases, sales at discounted prices
may provide needed revenue and product flow, but offering
discounted prices to consumers as a whole may lead to
counterintuitive loss of profits as a result of setting
expectations for lower prices, causing consumers to further delay
purchases, and as a result of failing to sell products at higher
prices to those consumers willing to pay the higher prices.
[0033] To address of the above-mentioned deficiencies and
inefficiencies with current information provision over the Internet
and by other electronic communications means, the current
application discloses an electronic information market in which
information providers and information consumers carry out
information-related transactions that allow information providers
and information consumers to make rational decisions and maximize
the benefits they obtain by exchanging information and value in the
information market. The techniques and approaches to which the
current application is directed may find application in a variety
of additional types of markets, in addition to the information
market described below. Providers of goods and services, referred
to as "products," may obtain information about individual potential
consumers of the products in order to more efficient determine
pricing for the products on an individual-consumer basis. Consumers
may also benefit from individual pricing by obtaining products at
prices tailored to meet their abilities to purchase and by
receiving advertisements and offers tailored to their specific
needs and interests.
[0034] FIG. 6 illustrates one implementation of the electronic
information market disclosed in the current application. This
illustration includes representations of each of the number of
components that together operate in order to implement the
electronic information market. In many cases, although only a
single component is shown in FIG. 6 for illustration clarity, the
information market may contain tens, hundreds, thousands, millions
or more participants and components that together cooperate to
provide for transaction-based information exchange. It should be
noted that, by the term "participant," the current disclosure may
refer to, at times, a human participant in the information market
and, more often, to processor-controlled systems and devices
operating on behalf of humans, corporations, and other
organizations.
[0035] Three different types of information-market participants are
indicated in FIG. 6. Information consumers are referred to as
"clients" or "users" and generally access information from a client
computer 602 executing a web-browser application or other such
information-acquiring and information-rendering application or
program. There are three different types of information-providing
participants shown in FIG. 6, including advertisers 604-606,
content providers 608-609, and consumers who participate in the
market using client computers, including client computer 602.
Advertisers provide advertising content that is consumed by users,
or clients. Content providers provide any of many different types
of information that can be acquired and rendered by a client
device, with the prototypical content encoded within web pages that
are accessed and rendered by web-browser applications running on
client computers. However, the electronic information market may
additionally encompass many other types of information provided
through many additional types of electronic communications media
and protocols. In addition to advertisers, content providers, and
clients or users, the information market includes one or more
transaction-certificate authorities 610, one or more
dispatch-service components 612, one or more aggregator-service
components 614, and one or more negotiator-service components 616.
The transaction-certificate authority receives and verifies
information about a user and returns to the user a digitally signed
transaction certificate that the user subsequently employs to carry
out various types of information-exchange transactions. The
transaction certificate, discussed further below, uniquely
identifies a user and includes a variety of different types of
information about the user that can facilitate information-exchange
transactions and individual pricing for information, in the
electronic information market, and for products of many different
kinds in additional markets. In general, the
transaction-certificate authority is a remote computational entity,
such as a data center or cloud-based virtual data center,
accessible to client computers via the Internet. Similarly,
advertisers and content providers are generally discrete, remote
server computers within data centers or cloud-based virtual data
centers. By contrast, the dispatch-service, aggregator-service, and
negotiator-service components 612, 614, and 616, also referred to
as "dispatch components," "aggregator components," and "negotiator
components," may be discrete computational entities or may be
executable entities included within or distributed among client
computers and other information-market participants. In many
implementations, the dispatch, aggregator, and
negotiator-components may all execute within servers of a remote
information-market data center or remote, cloud-based virtual data
center.
[0036] The dispatch-service component 612 receives browser-start-up
messages and access requests from client browsers, and dispatches
communications corresponding to the received messages to other
participants and components of an information market, as described
in further detail below. A negotiator-service component 616
negotiates with advertisers and content providers on behalf of
clients in order to arrive at mutually acceptable terms for various
information-exchange transactions carried out within the
information market. The aggregator-service component 614 combines
advertising and content in order to produce, in general,
advertising integrated with content that is provided to browsers
executing on client computers. In certain cases, the aggregator may
provide only advertising and in other cases the aggregator may
provide only content rather than advertising integrated with
content.
[0037] In general, the information market provides for various
different information-exchange transactions, including transactions
in which users agree to view advertising and receive a negotiated
compensation for viewing the advertising and transactions in which
users obtain content from content providers at a mutually agreeable
cost. The information market additionally allows advertisers and
content providers to undertake individual pricing for potential
consumers based on information provided to the advertisers and
content providers in transaction certificates. Additional types of
transactions may include various types of accounting and billing
transactions whose value is exchanged between participants of the
information market to compensate participants for viewing
advertisements and providing content. Of course, the currently
disclosed information market does not require that content
providers charge for providing content, that advertisers pay
compensation to those who receive their advertisements, or that
pricing is undertaken only on an individual-consumer basis. In
fact, content providers can continue to provide content to users at
no charge, should they desire to, and can continue to incorporate
advertisements in the content in return for financial compensation
from advertisers. Similarly, click-through-based compensation
schemes may continue to be used. The information market provides
enormous flexibility, sufficient to encompass current practices.
But, the information market also provides for the ability for
informed negotiation of advertisement placement and content
provision at the individual user level, allowing for many different
types of advertisement-targeting schemes, advertising revenue
schemes, and content-pricing schemes.
[0038] FIG. 7 illustrates an example transaction certificate. A
transaction certificate is a data structure containing various
types of information that is encoded in a physical electronic
memory or physical data-storage device, such as a magnetic disk or
optical disk. Transaction certificates are transferred through
electronic communications from a physical memory or physical
data-storage device of one processor-controlled device to another.
There are a variety of different possible encoding strategies by
which the information contained in a transaction certificate may be
encoded and stored in a physical memory or physical device.
[0039] A transaction certificate 702 may include a variety of
different types of information that characterizes a particular user
or client, including the client's name 704, address 705, telephone
number 706, mobile-phone number 707, email address 708, web site
709, and other identifying and contact information. The transaction
certificate may additionally include URL references 712-713 to
social-network pages that describe or that are associated with the
user. The transaction certificate may also include additional types
of information about the user, including the name or an identifier
for the user's employer 716, an indication of the user's position
or job title 718, an indication of the user's monthly or yearly
income 720, an indication of the total real assets held by the user
722, an indication of the user's total liquid assets 724, address
of the user's second home or other non-primary-residential property
726, descriptions of the user's motor vehicles 728-730, and many
additional types of information that may characterize a user. The
transaction certificate authority also includes a unique user ID
732 that is an alphanumeric identifier that uniquely identifies a
user within the information market. Each transaction-certificate
authority may generate unique IDs for users from a unique-ID range
or subspace allocated to the transaction-certificate authority by
the information market. In certain implementations,
transaction-certificate authorities, when there are multiple
transaction-certificate authorities, may cooperate to ensure each
user is associated with a single transaction certificate at any
point in time. In other implementations, users may acquire multiple
different transaction certificates. The transaction certificate
additionally contains an identifier or reference for the issuing
transaction-certificate authority 734 as well as a digital
signature 736 that is cryptographically secure and that serves as
proof that the transaction certificate was issued by the
transaction-certificate authority identified by the
transaction-certificate-authority identifier 734. There are many
ways to generate digital signatures, one of which is for the
transaction-certificate authority to encrypt the contents of the
transaction certificate, except for the digital signature, using a
private key known only to the transaction-certificate authority.
The transaction-certificate authority makes a corresponding public
key available to requesters, allowing requesters to decrypt the
digital signature to verify that the decrypted contents of the
digital signature exactly match the contents of the transaction
certificate. In many cases, a digital signature may be generated
from a cryptographic hash of the contents of the transaction
certificate rather than from the contents of the transaction
certificate so that the digital signature can be encoded in a
relatively small number of bytes.
[0040] FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a user-preferences data
structure that is exchanged at certain times among participants of
an electronic information market. As with the transaction
certificate, the user-preferences data structure is encoded, by
various different possible encoding techniques, to digital data
that is stored in physical memories and physical data-storage
devices. The user-preference data structures may be transferred
between participants and components of the information market
through electronic communications media. The user-preferences data
structure 802 includes the unique identifier for a user or client
804 along with a variety of information with respect to the user's
advertising and consumption preferences These may include lists of
preferred advertising subject matter 806, lists of preferred times
of day during which the preferred advertising subject matter is
most desirable 808, preferred ratios of content to advertising for
the different preferred subject matter 810, a desired compensation
per minute or web-page area that the user wishes to receive for
viewing the advertisements 812, a list of preferred advertisers
814, various subject-matter and advertiser filters 816 and 817 that
may be used to reject various types of advertising, and indications
818-821 of the types of media player, browser, device, and
operating system employed by the user to access content. In certain
implementations, there may be multiple indications in a single
user-preference data structure that characterize multiple devices
used by a user. In other implementations, a user may procure a
specific transaction certificate for each user device. In yet other
implementations, encryptions of the user's device may be separately
transferred in a different type of data structure. The user
preferences data structure may additional include various types of
information that characterize a user's content and content-delivery
preferences.
[0041] FIG. 9 illustrates an additional data structure that may be
exchanged between participants and components of an information
market. This data structure may specify a particular advertisement
or particular content provided by an advertiser or content
provider. This resource data structure, like the user-preference
data structure and transaction certificate, is digitally encoded by
one of various different digital-encoding methods and stored in a
physical memory or physical data-storage device, and may, in
addition, be transferred between participants and components of the
information market through electronic communications media. The
resource data structure 902 includes a unique ID 904 that
identifies a particular user or client, an ID that identifies a
particular content provider or advertiser 906, the URI for a
particular information-content file or advertising file or other
information-containing entity 908, an indication of the subject
matter of the content or advertising 910, an indication of the size
of the content or advertising, in bytes or other data-storage units
912, and potentially additional information that characterizes the
content or advertising 914. The resource data structure
additionally contains a digital signature 916 to authenticate the
resource data structure as having been prepared by the content
provider or advertiser identified by the ID 906. Advertisers and
content providers may transmit resource data structures to the
aggregator component of an information market for subsequent
incorporation into information entities made available to users, as
discussed further below.
[0042] FIG. 10 illustrate internal components of the
aggregator-service component (614 in FIG. 6) and general
operational characteristics of the aggregator-service component of
an information market. For each active client or user, the
advertising service generally includes a queue of advertisements
1002 that stores advertisements transferred to the aggregator by
advertisers. In one implementation, the queue may contain URIs
transferred in resource data structures by advertisers to the
aggregator component. In FIG. 10, the queue is shown as a circular
queue with in 1003 and out 1004 pointers. Circular queues are
commonly used for buffering continuously or intermittently received
information. In general, the aggregator accumulates advertisements
in a particular queue 1002 directed to particular users and
incorporates the advertisements into content provided by content
providers to generate one or more web pages 1005 that incorporate
advertising within content for transfer to and viewing by users.
The aggregator may order entries within the queue, in certain
implementations, based on a variety of different criteria. The
entries may be ordered by time of reception, by placement bids made
by the advertisers to the aggregator, by preferences indicated by
the potential consumer, and by many other criteria. In addition,
the aggregator contains one or more accounting data structures 1006
in which the aggregator accumulates indications of content,
advertisements, and associated compensations provided to the
aggregator by advertisers and content providers on behalf of users.
The accounting information can subsequently be used to determine
compensation owed to information-market participants by other
information-market participants and to arrange for transfer of
value among information-market participants to reconcile balances.
This accounting information can be used along with recorded
click-through events to implement click-through-event-based
advertising compensation schemes. During normal operation, the
aggregator may offset compensation owed to a user by advertisers
furnishing advertisements viewed by the user and compensation owed
by the user to content providers to generate net compensations owed
to the user by advertisers and/or owed by the user to content
providers. For example, if a user is provided one or more web pages
that include ten advertisements for which the user is paid ten
cents per advertisement to view, and the one or more web pages
includes content that the user has agreed to purchase from a
content provider for one dollar, the net charge to the user is
zero. In this case, the advertisers furnishing the advertisements
owe one dollar to the content provider. The various compensations
recorded in the accounting table or tables 1006 may be periodically
processed, perhaps on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, in order
to arrange for the transfer of value corresponding to net
accounting balances among information-market participants. Value
transfers involve exchange of currency or financial instruments,
through financial institutions, or may involve transfer of other
types of value, including services, information, and various types
of material goods and products. The accounting tables may also
include additional information that can be used to generate reports
that are furnished by the information market to content providers
and advertisers to facilitate subsequent transaction negotiations
and other information-market activities. For example, advertisers
may be interested in the ratio of the number of advertisements
furnished to particular users via the aggregator component to the
number of advertisements actually incorporated into content
accessed by the users in order to judge a user's efficiency in
consuming advertisements. In certain implementations, click-through
data may be accumulated by the aggregator in order to better inform
advertisers of users' interest in the advertisements furnished by
advertisers. Content providers may also obtain reports to assist
content providers in understanding the market for content provided
by the content providers.
[0043] FIG. 11 illustrates an additional component of the
information market not illustrated in FIG. 6. The information
market, as shown in FIG. 12, additionally includes an accounting
and billing service 1102 that mediates accounting and billing based
on the accounting information accumulated by the aggregator-service
component 614. As with the dispatch, aggregator, and
negotiator-service components, the accounting and billing service
1102 can be implemented as a distributed service, can be
implemented within a single remote data center or virtual data
center, or may be incorporated within the computing systems and
devices of various information-market participants and/or financial
intuitions. The accounting and billing service 1102 is generally,
like the transaction-certificate authority (610 in FIG. 6),
implemented as a distinct and separate computational entity rather
than included in the systems and devices associated with
information-market participants.
[0044] The electronic information market, to which the current
application is directed, is characterized by the fact that
information exchanges are negotiated on an individual basis.
Because of the negotiated nature of information exchanges, users
may not only be compensated for viewing advertisements, but may
furnish information to potential advertisers to allow the potential
advertisers to accurately target advertising to selected market
segments. Rather than paying content providers to insert
advertisements without precise and reliable targeting ability, the
advertisers are able to precisely target ads to individuals willing
to view them. Furthermore, advertisers can vary the compensation
they pay to viewers based on various criteria. For example, when an
advertiser identifies an information-market user who may likely
influence others to view the advertisement or consider purchasing
the advertised goods and services, the advertiser may be willing to
pay out significantly higher compensation than in the case of a
user who is unlikely to generate secondary advertisement
opportunities. As another example, advertisers may alter advertised
prices to attract potential consumers interested in purchasing a
product but unable to purchase the product at the generally offered
price. As yet another example, compensation for viewing
advertisements may consist of price discounts with respect to
standard or list pricing. Links to social-networking pages are
included in the transaction certificate, in one implementation, and
advertisers may employ various social-networking metrics to
ascertain the likelihood that the advertisement may be secondarily
distributed by a particular user. As another example, advertisers
may be willing to pay higher compensation during the initial phases
of a marketing campaign than during later phases of the campaign,
when particular advertisements have already reached a relatively
wide audience. The flexibility of negotiated advertisement
provision and negotiated compensation generally allows for a wide
variety of different optimization strategies to allow advertisers
to most effectively reach a desired audience at lowest possible
cost. Similarly, because content provision is also negotiated,
content providers are provided flexibility in pricing and
preciseness in identifying those who access the provided content in
order to optimize content provision through the electronic
information market. As one example, a content provider may
initially charge low or no fees to new content consumers in order
to attract new consumers to particular web sites or other
content-distribution facilities. As another example, content
providers may alter content provided to individuals based on the
individuals' characteristics obtained from the transaction
certificate and from information sources accessible through the
transaction certificate, including social-networking pages. As yet
another example, advertisers may offer individual pricing to
individual consumers. Users may also greatly benefit from the
flexibility of the information marketplace. Users can define
parameters used during the negotiation process to maximize
compensation they receive by agreeing to view advertisements in
order to obtain desired content as inexpensively as possible.
Furthermore, in bargaining with content providers, users may obtain
content at lower cost, particularly when users are willing to be
flexible with regard to how and when they access content.
[0045] Next, various different transactions carried out in one
implementation of the information market, discussed above with
reference to FIGS. 1-11, are described with reference to
control-flow-like diagrams provided in FIGS. 12A-16B. It should be
noted, at the onset, that these control-flow-like diagrams are
intended to illustrate the effects of one implementation of an
information market, and are not intended to provide detailed
descriptions and many low-level details, including error handling
and handling of many different types of special cases.
[0046] FIGS. 12A-B illustrate a "new session" routine called within
a web browser when the web browser is launched on a user's
computational device. When the web browser is launched, an
information-market browser plug-in notifies one or more dispatch
components (612 in FIG. 6) of the information market that the web
browser and web-browser user are now active in the information
market. In step 1202, the "new session" routine is invoked by the
web-browser plug-in during the start-up process. In this and
subsequent figures, the web-browser plug-in is referred to as the
"information-market service" or the "local information-market
service." In step 1204, the local information-market service
determines whether or not a valid transaction certificate is stored
in local memory. When no valid transaction certificate is present,
as determined in step 1206, then a "get certificate" routine is
called, in step 1208. When the "get certificate" routine
successfully obtains a transaction certificate, as determined in
step 1210, control flows to step 1212. Otherwise, an error is
returned to the user in step 1214. In certain implementations, the
routine "get certificate" may be called again with different
parameters or other types of ameliorative actions may be taken. In
step 1212, the information-market service obtains or updates a
variety of user preferences and other user information through an
information-collection interface. Any of various different types of
information-collection interfaces may be used, including text-entry
pages and other such information-entry facilities. In step 1216,
the user preferences and characteristics are encoded in a
user-preferences data structure, and this data structure and the
transaction certificate are combined and encoded using a
dispatch-component public encryption key. In this step, and in
other steps discussed below, standard public/private
data-encryption technologies are used, with public keys freely
distributed and private keys held in confidence by various
components and participants of the information market. Next, in
step 1218, the information-market service transmits the encoded
user preferences and transaction certificate to one or more
dispatch components (612 in FIG. 6) of the information market. This
data transmission is shown in FIG. 12A by horizontal arrow 1220. In
step 1222, the dispatch component receives the encoded user
preferences and transaction certificate transmitted by the
information-market service and decrypts the received encrypted
message. As indicated by the disk labeled "A" 1224 in FIG. 12A and
a similar disk 1226 in FIG. 12B, the control-flow diagram continues
in FIG. 12B with step 1228, in which the dispatch component
searches a database of advertisers to identify candidate
advertisers for the user described by the transaction certificate
received in step 1222. This step may consider many of different
types of information. For example, the database of advertisers may
list various different user characteristics that advertisers seek
to match to characteristics of users in order for the advertisers
to pay compensation to the users for viewing advertisements or to
provide individual pricing to users, including price discounts. In
other cases, a database may contain scripts or routines, or links
to scripts or routines, to carry out more complicated evaluations
of a user based on information contained in the user's transaction
certificate to decide whether or not an advertiser would be willing
to compensate the user for viewing the advertiser's advertisements.
In general, advertisers often target specific market segments, and
a user's transaction certificate is employed either by the dispatch
component or by a combination of the dispatch component and
advertisers to evaluate whether the user falls within a market
segment targeted by the advertiser. In the for-loop of steps
1230-1232, the information-market service encrypts and transmits
the user's transaction certificate as well as any user preferences
that may apply to a particular advertiser and transmits the
transaction certificate and additional preference information to
each candidate advertiser identified in step 1228. Similarly, this
information is also provided, in step 1234, to one or more
negotiator components (616 in FIG. 6) of the information market.
The user transaction certificate is provided, in step 1236, to one
or more aggregator components (614 in FIG. 6) of the information
market. In all cases, when information is transmitted from a first
component of the information market to a second component of the
information market, the information is encrypted using a public key
of the second component, to which the information is
transmitted.
[0047] Thus, the "new session" routine discussed above with
reference to FIGS. 12A-B informs various information-market
components that a user is now participating in the information
market and alerts selected advertisers of the user's participation.
As further discussed below, the informed advertisers can then begin
negotiating to provide advertisements for viewing by the user,
which are collected by the aggregator component of the information
market for subsequent provision to the user. In this routine, and
in the routines discussed below, a first information-market
component may transmit information to one or more of each
particular type of second component in the information market,
depending on whether or not the second information-market component
is a centralized component, a fully distributed component, or a
hybrid component.
[0048] FIGS. 13A-B illustrate a "get certificate" routine called in
step 1208 in FIG. 12A. In step 1302, the "get certificate" routine,
referred to as "the browser feature," below, is invoked either by
the local information-market service, as in FIG. 12A, or by a user
inputting a mouse click to a browser-displayed input feature. The
browser feature, in step 1304, collects information for the
transaction certificate from a browser user through a
browser-feature information-collection interface. Then, in step
1306, the browser feature encrypts the received information using
the transaction-certificate authority's public key and transmits
the encrypted information to a transaction-certificate authority
(610 in FIG. 6) in step 1308. In step 1310, the
transaction-certificate authority receives the information from the
browser feature and decrypts the encrypted information using the
transaction-certificate authority's private key. In step 1312, the
transaction-certificate authority checks the database for
information indicating a potential duplicate certificate. In this
implementation, each user is allowed only a single valid
transaction certificate at any given point in time. As discussed
above, in other implementations, a user may hold a valid
transaction certificate for each of the user's different
processor-controlled devices that the user employs to access the
information market and, in still other implementations, there may
be other limits or constraints on transaction-certificate issuance.
When a potential for a duplicate certificate is identified, as
determined in step 1314, the transaction-certificate authority
returns a duplicate error in step 1316 to the browser feature which
receives the duplicate error in step 1318 and returns the duplicate
error to the user, in step 1320, through some type of error-display
interface. Otherwise, in step 1322, the transaction-certificate
authority authenticates the received information. Any of many
different types of authentication activities may be carried out,
including evaluating references to social-networking pages,
validating address, email, and telephone-number information using
any of various different types of personal-information databases or
services, and other such activities. When the received information
is not successfully authenticated, as determined in step 1324, then
the transaction-certificate authority returns an authentication
error, in step 1326, which is received, in step 1328, by the
browser feature, following which the browser feature returns an
authentication error to the user in step 1330. When the information
is successfully authenticated, the transaction-certificate
authority determines, in step 1332, whether any additional
information might be desirable and, when so, as determined in step
1334, sends a request for more information to the browser feature
in step 1336, received by the browser feature in step 1338 with
transfer of control back to step 1304 in FIG. 13A. Once all
necessary information is received, the transaction-certificate
authority, in step 1340, prepares a transaction certificate,
digitally signs the transaction certificate, and encrypts the
transaction certificate with the browser's public encryption key,
in step 1342. Note that the browser's public encryption key is
generally transmitted to the transaction-certificate authority in
step 1308 of FIG. 13A. Alternatively, the transaction-certificate
authority may obtain the browser's public encryption key from a
database of browser public encryption keys maintained by the
information market. In step 1344, the transaction-certificate
authority returns a transaction certificate to the browser, which
receives the transaction certificate in step 1346 and decrypts the
certificate and stores the decrypted certificate in local memory in
step 1348. In alternative implementations, the transaction
certificate may be stored in encrypted form and only decrypted
immediately prior to each use by the browser feature.
[0049] FIGS. 14A-B illustrate an access transaction by which a
browser participating in the information market accesses content on
behalf of an information-market user. In step 1402, a browser
processes access to a web page or other such information access
invoked by user input, such as input of a mouse click to a
displayed hyperlink, and uses various types of data and filters to
decide whether or not this access represents a negotiable
new-content request. As one example, a first access to a web site
may represent a negotiable new-content request, but secondary
accesses within a web site may not, when information corresponding
to the secondary accesses have already been prepared for delivery
to the browser by one or more aggregator components (614 in FIG. 6)
of the information market. As another example, access by the
browser to a web site provided by a content provider not
participating in the information market may clearly be deemed to
not represent a negotiable new-content request. When the access is
not a negotiable new-content request, as determined in step 1404,
the browser accesses information in a normal fashion, external to
the information market, in step 1406. Otherwise, in step 1408, the
browser prepares an access request and transmits the request to one
or more dispatch components (612 in FIG. 6) of the information
market. The dispatch component receives the access request, in step
1410, and transmits the access request to a negotiator component
(616 in FIG. 6). The negotiator component carries out a negotiation
with the corresponding content provider for access to the desired
information and, when a negotiation is successfully completed,
returns a response to the negotiator component including an
aggregator URL for the content, received by the dispatch component
in step 1412, and the negotiated compensation. A response is
returned by the dispatch component to the browser in step 1414
that, when negotiation was successful, includes the URL for the
content prepared by the aggregator component. This response is
received by the browser in step 1416. When negotiation for the
content has succeeded, as determined in step 1418 of FIG. 14B, the
browser accesses the content using the aggregator URL to obtain the
content in step 1420. Otherwise, the content is accessed by normal
browser processing in step 1406 via step 1422. Access of the
aggregator URL may involve requesting and obtaining a single HTML
file corresponding to a single web page or may involve a more
complex access in which multiple HTML files and web pages are
received. The type and complexity of the access depends on the type
of content being accessed by the web browser.
[0050] FIG. 15 illustrates a transaction carried out between a
negotiator component of the information market and an advertiser.
When an advertiser receives notice that a user/browser is
participating in the information market, the advertiser may send
proposals to the negotiator for providing advertisements for
viewing by the user. The negotiator component (616 in FIG. 6) of
the information market negotiates with the advertiser on the user's
behalf and, when the negotiations are successful, authorizes the
advertiser to begin furnishing advertisements to the aggregator
component or components (614 in FIG. 6) for buffering for
subsequent inclusion in content provided to the user. In step 1502,
the negotiator receives a proposal from an advertiser and evaluates
a proposal with respect to user preferences and other user
information stored in the user's transaction certificate. When a
proposal is acceptable, as determined in step 1504, then, in step
1506, the negotiator sends an acceptance message to the advertiser
and stores an indication of the acceptance in memory. In step 1508,
the advertiser receives the acceptance message and, as a result,
begins transmitting advertisements to the aggregator component in
step 1510. When an in initial proposal is not acceptable, as
determined in step 1504, the negotiator may send a counterproposal
to the advertiser in step 1512. The advertiser receives the
counterproposal in step 1514 and evaluates the counterproposal to
decide whether or not the counterproposal is acceptable. When the
counterproposal is not acceptable, as determined in step 1516, the
advertiser returns a rejection message, in step 1518, to the
negotiator which receives the message in step 1520 and stores an
indication of the rejection in memory. Otherwise, the advertiser
returns an acceptance message, in step 1522, and then begins
sending advertisements to the aggregator in step 1510. The
acceptance message is received by the negotiator in step 1524 and
an indication of the acceptance is stored in memory. By storing
indications of acceptance and rejection of proposals, the
negotiator may gain information about advertiser characteristics
that allow the negotiator to more effectively negotiate on a user's
behalf for advertisements from the advertiser. In general, the
negotiation primarily concerns the compensation desired by a user
for viewing advertisements furnished by the advertiser, but the
negotiations may be more complex, in that different compensation
levels may be desired for different types of advertisements, for
different times of the day, and based on other such parameters and
characteristics.
[0051] FIGS. 16A-D illustrate operation of the aggregator component
or components of an information market. In general, the aggregator
can be described as an event handler, at a high level. FIG. 16A
illustrates the event handler. In step 1602, the aggregator waits
for a next event. When a next event occurs, the aggregator
determines the type of event and calls a corresponding routine for
that event. When the event is reception of a dispatch message, as
determined in step 1604, then the aggregator calls a "new consumer"
routine in step 1606. When the event is reception of an advertiser
message, as determined in step 1608, then the routine "new ad" is
called in step 1610. When the event is reception of a message from
a content provider, as determined in step 1612, then the routine
"new content" is called in step 1614. Many other types of events
may occur and may be handled by the aggregator, represented by a
default handler 1616 in FIG. 16A. The event loop continuously
executes within one or more aggregator components of the
information market.
[0052] FIG. 16B shows the routine "new consumer" called in step
1606 of FIG. 16A. In step 1618, the aggregator decrypts the message
received from a dispatch component and extracts the unique
identifier for the user as well as additional information from the
transaction certificate sent by the dispatch component on behalf of
the user. When a queue and other data structures have not already
been set up for the user, as determined in step 1620, then in step
1622, the aggregator sets up an advertising queue and other data
structures for the user.
[0053] FIG. 16C shows the routine "new ad" called in step 1610 of
FIG. 16A. In step 1624, the aggregator receives a new advertisement
from an advertiser. When the advertisement queue for the user for
which the advertisement has been sent is already full, as
determined in step 1626, the aggregator returns a pause message to
the advertiser in step 1628. Otherwise, the advertisement
referenced in the message is queued to the advertising queue on
behalf of the user, the unique identifier for which is included in
the message from the advertiser, in step 1630, and the aggregator
returns an acknowledgement to the advertiser in step 1632.
[0054] FIG. 16D illustrates the routine "new content" called in
step 1614 of FIG. 16A. In step 1634, the aggregator receives a
content message and URL tag from a content provider. The URL tag is
generally determined by the negotiator component or another
information-market component upon successful negotiation of content
provision. In step 1636, the aggregator lays out one or more web
pages or other information-conveying vehicles, including space for
advertisements. Then, in the for-loop of steps 1638-1644, the
aggregator attempts to fill each space in the laid-out content
vehicle, in step 1636, with advertisements obtained from the
advertisement queue for a particular user. When the queue is empty,
the advertising space may be otherwise filled, in step 1643.
Otherwise, a de-queued advertisement is incorporated into the
currently considered space in step 1642. In step 1646, the
aggregator associates the completed web page or pages with a URL
that incorporates the URL tag received in step 1634. In step 1648,
the aggregator updates the accounting tables obtained by the
aggregator to reflect compensation owed to the user by advertisers
and compensation owed by the user to the content provider.
[0055] The above-discussed control-flow diagrams illustrate basic
functionality of the information market. In actual implementations,
many of the steps may involve greater complexity in implementation
logic. For example, it may be the case that a given a web page or
other content-provision vehicle accessed by a user may include
content provided by two or more content providers, in which case a
more complex negotiation may be undertaken by the information
market and more complex logic may be carried out by the aggregator
to incorporate advertisements and multiple content references into
a complete content-provision vehicle. The accounting and billing
activities undertaken by the information market may be carried out
in any of many different ways, and may involved third-party
financial institutions and monitoring of click-through events by
information-market components. Additional complexities may arise in
the case that a user simultaneously or concurrently accesses the
information market through multiple user devices and in the case
the information market is distributed across multiple dispatch,
negotiator, and aggregator components.
[0056] It should be noted that, in certain cases, users may elect
to exclusively view advertisements, during a period of time, for
compensation, or, in other cases, may view content without
advertisements by paying compensation to content providers. The
information market is flexible and accommodates many different
types of use by content providers, advertisers, and users.
[0057] Although the present invention has been described in terms
of particular embodiments, it is not intended that the invention be
limited to these embodiments. Modifications within the spirit of
the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art. For
example, a large number of different implementations of the
information market can be produced by varying one or more of many
different design and implementation parameters, including choice of
browser technology, programming language, operating system, modular
organization, data structures, control structures, and other such
parameters. As mentioned above, the information-market components,
including the dispatch, aggregator, and negotiator components, may
be implemented in discrete, separate computing facilities, in
certain implementations, or may be included in one or more of user,
advertiser, and content-provider computing facilities. While the
above discussion focused primarily on web-browser applications
which access and render content and advertisements for display to
users, other types of content-accessing and content-rendering
components may be designed or enhanced to interface to the
information market. Value transactions carried out by the
information market may involve monetary transactions or
transactions in which goods and services are directly bartered for
advertising consumption and content consumption. Finally, the
above-described techniques may be applied to many additional types
of markets in which goods and services are exchanged, including
traditional retail markets. Transaction certificates may be
supplied, in such situations, from mobile phones and other
computing devices or from smart cards or other types of
information-transfer media.
[0058] It is appreciated that the previous description of the
disclosed embodiments is provided to enable any person skilled in
the art to make or use the present disclosure. Various
modifications to these embodiments will be readily apparent to
those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein
may be applied to other embodiments without departing from the
spirit or scope of the disclosure. Thus, the present disclosure is
not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown herein but is
to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and
novel features disclosed herein.
* * * * *