Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080201734 | Association of Ads With Tagged Audiovisual Content - Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for presenting advertisements. In one aspect, audiovisual content is presented to a user. An indicator is presented together with the audiovisual content to the user. The indicator is associated with one or more tags. Input selecting the indicator is received from the user. An advertisement, associated with the indicator and dynamically selected based at least in part on one or more of the tags, is presented to the user. | 08-21-2008 |
20080243601 | ADVERTISEMENT INVENTORY PROCESSING - Systems and methods for requesting advertisement slots are provided. Inputs from multiple requesters for advance purchase of an advertisement slot can be received. A determination is made as to which of the requesters shall be allotted the advertisement slot in advance of presenting content of the advertisement slot. In the case where inputs include consideration terms, a determination may be made as to a high bidder for the advertisement slot based on the consideration terms. In one version, the system and related method includes three ways to request an advertisement slot, the ways including a bid, an advance purchase, and a reservation. | 10-02-2008 |
20090070706 | Placement Attribute Targeting - A computer-implemented method includes determining an attribute of a web page to be displayed to a user at a location, selecting content corresponding to the determined web page attribute, and transmitting the selected content to the location for display as at least part of the web page. | 03-12-2009 |
20100287041 | REVIEWING THE SUITABILITY OF WEBSITES FOR PARTICIPATION IN AN ADVERTISING NETWORK - The way in which Websites are reviewed for use in an advertising network may be improved by (a) accepting a collection including one or more documents, (b) determining whether or not the collection complies with policies of an advertising network, and (c) approving the collection if it was determined that the collection complies with the policies. The collection may be added to the advertising network if the collection is approved such that (e.g., content-targeted) advertisements may be served in association with renderings of documents included in the collection. The collection may be a Website including one or more Webpages. The policy may concern (A) content of the one or more documents of the collection, (B) usability of a Website wherein the collection of one or more documents is a Website including one or more Webpages, and/or (C) a possible fraud or deception on the advertising network or participants of the advertising network by the collection. | 11-11-2010 |
20110099064 | Association of Ads with Tagged Audiovisual Content - Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for presenting advertisements. In one aspect, audiovisual content is presented to a user. An indicator is presented together with the audiovisual content to the user. The indicator is associated with one or more tags. Input selecting the indicator is received from the user. An advertisement, associated with the indicator and dynamically selected based at least in part on one or more of the tags, is presented to the user. | 04-28-2011 |
20120233009 | Endorsement Subscriptions for Sponsored Stories - Methods, apparatuses and systems directed to subscribing to a service for generating and delivering sponsored stories from an organic activity stream in a social networking site. A proxy bidder may aggressively proxy bid for the delivery of the sponsored stories based on a pacing algorithm and feedback loop monitoring the delivery level of sponsored stories. | 09-13-2012 |
20120323998 | Social Networking System Data Exchange - An online publisher provides content items such as advertisements to users. To enable publishers to provide content items to users who meet targeting criteria of the content items, an exchange server aggregates data about the users. The exchange server receives user data from two or more sources, including a social networking system and one or more other service providers. To protect the user's privacy, the social networking system and the service providers may provide the user data to the exchange server without identifying the user. The exchange server tracks each unique user of the social networking system and the service providers using a common identifier, enabling the exchange server to aggregate the users' data. The exchange server then applies the aggregated user data to select content items for the users, either directly or via a publisher. | 12-20-2012 |
20130030905 | User-Initiated Boosting of Social Networking Objects - Methods, apparatuses and systems directed to allowing users of a social networking system to promote specific social networking objects in exchange for payment. In particular embodiments, promoted social networking objects may be exported to a sponsored story system for display in a sponsored story area of the promoting user's friends' home pages. In particular embodiments, the promoted social networking objects may be pinned for a predetermined amount of time, clicks, or impressions at the top of the news feeds for the first degree connections of the promoting user. | 01-31-2013 |
20130030987 | Paid Profile Personalization - In one embodiment, a system includes one or more computing systems that implement a social networking environment and are operable to provide paid profile personalization functions to users. In particular embodiments, the user may select one or more social networking objects to replace advertisements or other elements that are normally displayed to visitors of the user's profile page that are otherwise controlled by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user may edit elements on their profile page that are otherwise automatically generated and controlled in design and content by the social networking system. In particular embodiments, the user is billed on a recurring basis for profile personalization. | 01-31-2013 |
20130080225 | Referral Program for Businessess - In particular embodiments, a user enters a code received at a point of sale identifying a node on a social network representing the point of sale. Upon entering the code into a mobile application, the application requests the user to identify other users that referred the user to the point of sale. Upon selecting one or more referrers, the social networking system applies one or more policies to the selected referrers. In particular embodiments, the social networking system integrates with online merchants, and prompts a user to select users or nodes that referred the user to the site or the specific product. In particular embodiments, the social networking system tracks the value of every single transaction, and may generate a list of the top ten value generators for a given node. | 03-28-2013 |
20130124322 | TARGETING INFORMATION TO A USER BASED ON VIEWED PROFILE PAGES - A social networking system maintains profile information about a subject user and about a viewing user. The viewing user requests a page of information about the subject user (e.g., a profile page) from the social networking system. The social networking system determines a set of interests or other information about the subject user based on the subject user's profile information. One or more ads are selected based at least in part on the set of determined interests or other information about the subject user. The profile page of the subject user is generated, where the profile page comprises profile information about the subject user along with the selected ads. The profile page of the subject user is then sent to the viewing user for display. | 05-16-2013 |
20130159100 | SELECTING ADVERTISEMENTS FOR USERS OF A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM USING COLLABORATIVE FILTERING - A social networking system selects advertisements for its users using collaborative filtering based on the users' interactions with objects in the social networking system. The objects may be games, pages, groups, deals, messages, content items, advertisements, or any other object with which a user may interact in the system. The system may identify a viewing user's interaction with a first object, determine a second object that is similar to the first object based on interactions of users with both of the objects, and send an advertisement associated with the second object to the viewing user. The system determines a second object based a similarity score between the first object and the second object, which may be a measure of users who have interacted with both objects and may be normalized by a number of user interactions by the users with the objects. | 06-20-2013 |
20130191207 | CROSS-MEDIUM ADVERTISING NETWORK - An online advertising system receives ads and ad exposure goals, such as a desired number of impressions or amount of presentation time, from advertisers. The online advertising system may also receive a time-based advertising purchase. A request for an ad is received for a client, and an amount of exposure is determined for each received ad across a plurality of ad mediums. The ad mediums may include both controlled ad mediums and external ad mediums. The advertising system selects an ad for presentation among the received ads based on the received ad exposure goals associated with the ads and the determined amount of exposure for each ad. The advertising system may select an ad by determining bids for each ad and conducting an auction among the ads. In such an embodiment, the advertising system may determine the bids for ads that have met their ad exposure goals to be zero. | 07-25-2013 |
20130191226 | PRICING AND DELIVERY OF ADVERTISING BASED ON EXPOSURE TIME - An online advertising system receives ads and ad exposure goals, such as a desired number of impressions or amount of presentation time, from advertisers. The online advertising system may also receive a time-based advertising purchase. A request for an ad is received for a client, and an amount of exposure is determined for each received ad across a plurality of ad mediums. The ad mediums may include both controlled ad mediums and external ad mediums. The advertising system selects an ad for presentation among the received ads based on the received ad exposure goals associated with the ads and the determined amount of exposure for each ad. The advertising system may select an ad by determining bids for each ad and conducting an auction among the ads. In such an embodiment, the advertising system may determine the bids for ads that have met their ad exposure goals to be zero. | 07-25-2013 |
20130282428 | PROBABILISTIC INFERENCE OF SITE DEMOGRAPHICS FROM AGGREGATE USER INTERNET USAGE AND SOURCE DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION - A demographic attribute value of a sink online document (such as Websites or Web pages) may be determined given a set of users who have visited at least one of the source documents and the sink document, by (a) accepting a value(s) of the demographic attribute, each of which values is associated with a source online document (where each of the source online documents has a value for the demographic attribute and has been visited by at least one user of the given set), (b) determining an estimate of the demographic attribute value of each of the users of the given set using the accepted demographic attribute value of each of the source online documents visited by the user, and (c) determining the demographic attribute value of the sink online document using the determined estimate of the demographic attribute value of each of the users of the given set. | 10-24-2013 |
20140143050 | Managing Targeting of Advertisements Based on User Associations with Social Networking Objects - An entity provides a competitive block list for one or more of its objects in a social networking system. The competitive block list identifies advertisers or other entities prevented from targeting advertisements based on connections between users and objects of the entity. If a later received advertisement is targeted based on a connection between a user and an object of the entity, the social networking system determines whether the advertiser associated with the advertisement is included on the competitive block list. If the competitive block list includes the advertiser, the advertisement is determined not to be valid, and not presented to users. Otherwise, the advertisement is determined to be valid, and may be presented to users thereafter. | 05-22-2014 |
20140149215 | DETERMINING KEYWORDS FOR CONTENT ITEMS - A social networking system receives a request to generate a post including a content item from a user and extracts a topic from the content item. Using the extracted topic, the social networking system identifies candidate keywords, each associated with one or more expected values. The social networking system may use information associated with the user to determine the expected values associated with the candidate keywords. Using the expected values, the social networking system ranks the candidate keywords and selects a keyword from the candidate keywords based on the ranking. Based on the selected keyword the social networking system generates a link to content and includes the link to content and the generated content item in the post that is presented to the user. | 05-29-2014 |
20140149223 | Targeted Advertisements In Mobile Applications - A social networking system enables targeted advertising to its users on mobile devices, either directly in third-party applications or via an ad exchange. An application on the mobile device associated with the social networking system stores user identifying information in a shared memory location on the user's mobile device. To deliver a targeted ad to the user on the mobile device, an application executed by the mobile device retrieves the user identifying information, which is transmitted to an ad server associated with the social networking system or to the social networking system. Based on the user's profile in the social networking system, an advertisement is selected for the user (e.g., using targeting criteria and an auction model) and sent to an ad exchange or to the application on the mobile device for presentation to the user on the mobile device. | 05-29-2014 |
20140149502 | THIRD-PARTY COMMUNICATIONS TO SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM USERS USING USER DESCRIPTORS - Based on information used by the external system to identify a target user, the external system generates a target user hash identifier that is communicated to the social networking system along with a message. Using information from user profiles maintained by the social networking system, the social networking system generates hash identifiers for its users and compares the target user hash identifier to the generated hash identifiers hash identifiers for social networking system users are generated. The social networking system sends the message to a user associated with a hash identifier generated from user profile information that matches the target user hash identifier. Hence, an external application may communicate with social networking system users without accessing access information about the users maintained by the social networking system. | 05-29-2014 |
20140278913 | ADVERTISEMENT CAMPAIGN SIMULATOR - A shadow ad can be evaluated by receiving an ad request, identifying at least one shadow ad and at least one actual ad based on the received ad request, generating an ad ranking by analyzing one or more criteria associated with the identified at least one shadow ad and the at least one actual ad, and selecting one or more of the identified at least one shadow ad and the at least one actual ad based on the ad ranking. Further, the at least one shadow ad can be associated with one or more campaign parameters corresponding to a shadow ad campaign. Additionally, the ad request can be received from an online advertising system. | 09-18-2014 |
20140324597 | SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM DATA EXCHANGE - An online publisher provides content items such as advertisements to users. To enable publishers to provide content items to users who meet targeting criteria of the content items, an exchange server aggregates data about the users. The exchange server receives user data from two or more sources, including a social networking system and one or more other service providers. To protect the user's privacy, the social networking system and the service providers may provide the user data to the exchange server without identifying the user. The exchange server tracks each unique user of the social networking system and the service providers using a common identifier, enabling the exchange server to aggregate the users' data. The exchange server then applies the aggregated user data to select content items for the users, either directly or via a publisher. | 10-30-2014 |