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Description  |
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FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to the field of advertising on a computer
network. More particularly, the present invention concerns how to
reimburse a merchant operating an Internet server when a consumer has
accessed the Internet server and then later accesses another Internet
server operated by another merchant who has agreed to pay a referral fee.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
There are currently a number of advertising services in use on the Internet
today. These advertising services facilitate buying and selling
advertising space on merchant web sites. If a merchant wishes to buy
advertising space (i.e. wishes to pay to have advertisements displayed on
other web sites), the merchant contracts such an advertising service,
negotiates a contract, and pays according to terms of the contract. If a
merchant wishes to sell advertising space (i.e. wishes to get something of
value in exchange for displaying advertisements for other merchants), the
merchant registers with such an advertising service, then places special
advertisement hyperlinks on the merchant's web site.
The term merchant is used here to indicate the owner or operator of a
(computer) server linked to a network, such as the Internet, and able to
publish information on the network. The information published by a first
merchant could be pay-per-view information or an advertisement of goods
and services offered by a first merchant, or the information could be an
advertisement of goods and services offered by a second merchant, i.e. a
referral to the second merchant. Various advertising systems have been
developed to compensate a merchant for providing a referral to another
merchant.
In many advertising systems, compensation to merchants who sell advertising
space (i.e. who advertise for other merchants) is computed in one of three
ways: per impression, per visitor, or per sale. Often an advertising
service computes and distributes compensation. In the per impression way
of computing compensation, such an advertising service counts the number
of unique consumers who view the advertisement, and the merchant receives
a fixed fee for each. Advertising services that use this method are
currently located at the following web sites: http://www.doubleclick.com;
http://www.hyperbanner.com; http://www.linkexchange.com; and
http://www.smartclicks.com.
In the per visitor (consumer) way of computing compensation, an advertising
service counts the number of unique consumers who click on the
advertisement, and the merchant receives a fixed fee for each. Advertising
services that use this method include: http://www.aaddzz.com;
http://www.bannerbrokers.com; http://www.clicktrade.com; and
http://www.eads.com.
In the per sale way of computing compensation, a merchant receives a
commission when a consumer clicks on an advertising linking the consumer
to the server of a merchant and the consumer subsequently purchases goods
or services from the merchant through the linked access.
On the Internet, computers access each other through the World Wide Web, a
kind of network operating system. In this system, servers and consumer
computers are said to reside at web sites. In the prior art of Internet
advertising methods, it is common to use some standard procedure for
identifying a consumer, or a consumer's computer, so as to track when the
consumer accesses a merchant's web site, or when the consumer moves from
one web page of a merchant (a quantity of intermission at a web site) to
another (at possibly another web site). The tracking is performed by
software put in place by the advertising service.
An advertising service may host, on a server operated by the advertising
service, an actual advertisement for a merchant, as opposed to a link to
an advertisement for the merchant. Then when a consumer selects to view,
from a server operated by the merchant, a web page including an
advertisement, the advertisement (i.e. the code for constructing its image
for display as part of the web page) is actually pulled from the server of
the advertising service by means of a link to the advertisement (in the
code on the server, operated by the merchant, for constructing the web
page). Thus, in an arrangement like this, the advertising service can
record access by a consumer to an advertisement.
Alternatively, an advertising service may set up, on a first server
operated by the advertising service itself, an advertisement for a
merchant's web page stored on a server operated by the merchant, but which
includes a link to a second server operated by the advertising service.
Then a consumer who accesses the first server and selects to view the web
page is directed to the second server operated by the advertising service,
which then directs the consumer to the server operated by the merchant
where the advertised web page is located. In this arrangement, the second
server of the advertising service records access by the consumer of the
advertised web page of the merchant.
Recording an access of an Internet server or of a web page on an Internet
server is a feature of many commercial web servers. In providing this
recording, such a web server may set, on consumer's computer, a so-called
cookie (i.e. a persistent state data object, as described e.g. in U.S.
Pat. No. 5,774,670) that distinguishes the consumer from other consumers,
at least for subsequent accesses to a server in the same second-level
Internet domain as the cookie-issuing web server. In the context of the
present invention, a cookie is a data object that resides on a consumer's
computer and can be updated by the web server that set the cookie on the
consumer's computer. Such updating is performed to record, for example, a
total number of visits, each visit by the consumer to the cookie-issuing
web server. Whether or not a cookie is used in tracking a consumer, a web
server may append, for later inspection, information about the consumer's
computer (such as its network address) to a local log file (in memory or
on storage media). Such consumer tracking is widely used, and is regarded
as a valuable source of marketing information.
Thus, the consumer activity on the web leading up to viewing a merchant's
web page does not flow according to any one particular structure at the
code level; there are many ways a consumer might arrive at a web page,
depending on what mechanisms the merchant and advertising service chose to
use. In addition, there are many tracks through the web a consumer might
take in ending up at a particular web site having a web page the consumer
wants to view. A consumer might arrive at a web site by first looking up
information in a directory service or search engine. Or a consumer might
arrive at a web site by following a helpful sequence of hyperlinks,
possibly pointing to several other merchant web sites in the process.
Because of this diversity of activity leading to a consumer viewing a
particular web page, there is currently no robust mechanism to determine
how the owner of the particular web page might compensate or credit
merchants whose web sites were possibly instrumental in the consumer
ultimately viewing the particular web page. What is needed is a way to
determine what server-operating merchants to compensate, if any, for a
consumer viewing a web page of another merchant who is willing to reward
for potential referrals to the web page.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to determine which
server-operating merchants to reward in the event of a consumer accessing
a web page of a merchant who desires to make compensation for referrals to
the web page. It is a further object of the present invention to determine
how much to reward such server-operating merchants.
The present invention achieves this object by a method, for use on a
computer network, for distributing a reward from a paying merchant to
participating merchants, the paying merchant and participating merchants
all operating servers connected to the computer network, the reward to be
distributed after a consumer visits a web site of the paying merchant, the
method comprising the steps of: recording each access by the consumer of a
participating merchant web site, including access by the consumer of the
paying merchant web site; accepting referral points issued by a paying
merchant when a consumer accesses a pre-determined web site of the paying
merchant; and distributing to participating merchants the referral points
according to criteria that limit the number of participating merchants,
the criteria including a requirement that the consumer have visited a web
site of a participating merchant before visiting the pre-determined web
site of the paying merchant; wherein the distributing to participating
merchants is calculated based on a pre-agreed pass-on percentage for each
participating merchant, the pass-on percentage indicating what percentage
of any referral points the participating merchant agrees to pass on to
other participating merchants who satisfy the criteria for receiving a
portion of the referral points.
In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the criteria include a
requirement that the consumer visit a participating merchant within a
pre-determined time before the consumer visits the pre-determined web site
of the paying merchant in order for the participating merchant to be
awarded a portion of the referral points.
In another embodiment of the present invention, the criteria include a
requirement that after last visiting a participating merchant before the
consumer visits the pre-determined web site of the paying merchant, the
consumer not visit more than a pre-determined number of other
participating merchants in order for the participating merchant to be
awarded a portion of the referral points.
In another aspect of the present invention, the above object is achieved by
an architecture, for use on a computer network, for distributing a reward
from a paying merchant to participating merchants, the paying merchant and
participating merchants all operating servers connected to the computer
network, the reward to be distributed after a consumer visits a web site
of the paying merchant, the architecture comprising: means for recording
each access by the consumer of a participating merchant web site,
including access by the consumer of the paying merchant web site; means
for accepting referral points issued by a paying merchant when a consumer
accesses a pre-determined web site of the paying merchant; means for
distributing to participating merchants the referral points according to
criteria that limits the number of participating merchants, the criteria
including a requirement that the consumer have visited a web site of a
participating merchant before visiting the pre-determined web site of the
paying merchant; wherein the means for distributing to participating
merchants uses a pre-agreed pass-on percentage for each participating
merchant, the pass-on percentage indicating what percentage of any
referral points the participating merchant agrees to pass on to other
participating merchants who satisfy the criteria for receiving a portion
of the referral points.
In still another aspect of the present invention, the above object is
achieved by an architecture, for use on a computer network, for executing
a service of distributing a reward from a paying merchant to participating
merchants, the paying merchant and participating merchants all operating
servers connected to the computer network, the reward to be distributed
after a consumer visits a web site of the paying merchant, the
architecture comprising: a checkpoint server, for recording each access by
the consumer of a participating merchant web site, including access by the
consumer of the paying merchant web site; an accounting server, for
accepting referral points issued by a paying merchant when a consumer
accesses a pre-determined web sire of the paying merchant, and for
distributing to participating merchant the referral points according to
criteria that limit the number of participating merchants, the criteria
including a requirement that the consumer have visited a web site of a
participating merchant before visiting the pre-determined web site of the
paying merchant; and a merchant database server, for hosting a database of
information about each participating merchant needed in performing the
service, the information including a pass-on percentage, and for paying
merchant also a number of referral points the paying merchant agrees to
issue for distribution to participating merchants whenever a consumer
visits an indicated web site of the paying merchant.
The present invention greatly extends the prior art notion of advertising
on the Internet. The present invention is not intended to reward all
merchants visited by a consumer on the way to a paying merchant, or even
only those merchant actually instrumental in the consumer's visiting a web
site of a paying merchant; it distributes rewards only approximately,
making a tradeoff of accuracy for a lower burden of computation. The
result is a means of compensating some merchants in a sequence of
merchants who (only) potentially referred a consumer to a paying merchant,
with little burden on system performance. Because the result provides
compensation to more than the merchant operating the web site a consumer
visits just before visiting the web site of a paying merchant, the present
invention is said to provide multi-level commissioned advertising.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The above and other features and advantages of the invention will become
apparent from a consideration of the subsequent detailed description
presented in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing elements of an architecture used in
compensating for referrals to a web page, according to the present
invention;
FIG. 2 is a flow chart indicating how, according to the present invention,
a merchant prepares to participate in a program providing referral fees;
FIG. 3 is a flow chart indicating how, according to the present invention,
a merchant prepares to participate in a program providing referral fees;
and
FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing one way according to the present invention
to compensate merchants for referring a consumer to a web page of another
merchant.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION INCLUDING BEST MODE
Referring now to FIG. 1, an architecture 13 for a referral reward program
according to the present invention is shown. The program is operated by a
referral point awarding service (RPAS). Merchants operating web sites on
the Internet 15 register with the RPAS to become registered merchants. The
referral award program rewards registered merchants who have potentially
referred consumers to the web site of a registered merchant who has agreed
to reward referral points through RPAS either when a consumer visits the
web site of the paying merchant, or when a consumer has not only visited
the web site, but actually purchased goods or services using the web site.
Such a registered merchant is called here a paying merchant. The
registered merchants who are eligible to receive a portion of the referral
points are called here participating merchants. In the best mode, a
registered merchant may be a participating merchant in one scenario (when
a consumer accesses a server or visits a web site or accesses a particular
web page of the registered merchant and eventually visits the web site of
a paying merchant), and a paying merchant in another scenario (when a
consumer accesses a server or visits a web site or accesses a particular
web page of the registered merchant for which the registered merchant has
agreed to award referral points). Each referral point represents something
of value, such as frequent flyer miles or even money.
For the description provided here, a registered merchant will be either a
participating merchant or a paying merchant (but not sometimes one and
sometimes the other). But it is to be understood that, in the best mode, a
registered merchant who has agreed to award referral points when a
consumer ends up accessing material from a server of the registered
merchant, can be a participating merchant in case of a consumer visiting
some other paying merchant.
The architecture 13 includes various RPAS servers 10-12, connected to the
Internet 15, including an RPAS accounting server 10 for awarding referral
points when a suitable referral event occurs, an RPAS merchant database
server 11 for hosting a database of participating merchants including
information about the merchants relevant to the referral reward program,
and an RPAS checkpoint server 12 for monitoring visits by consumers to web
sites of the registered merchants. In the preferred embodiment, there are
several checkpoint servers, each serving different merchants.
Connected to the architecture 13 through the Internet 15 are a consumer
computer 14, and merchant web sites 1-k of registered merchants, the web
sites indicated as merchant #1 web site 16, merchant #2 web site 17,
merchant #3 web site 18, . . . , and merchant #k web site 19. Although
other merchants (not shown) might also be connected to the Internet, it is
assumed here that the merchants shown are all registered with the RPAS, as
described below, and that at least one of these registered merchants is a
paying merchant, i.e. one who has agreed to award referral points if a
consumer accesses a server of the merchant or visits a particular web site
of the merchant.
As a specific example of the present invention in the best mode, which will
be described more specifically below, suppose that merchants m_1, m_2,
m_3, and m_4 are the only merchants registered with RPAS, and suppose
merchant m_4 agrees to award z=10 referral points when a consumer visits a
web site of m_4, and that m_1, m_2 and m_3 are participating merchants in
the scenario of this example. The referral points are to be distributed by
RPAS among participating merchants, according to whether each of the other
participating merchants is identified as meeting the criteria used in the
present invention to award referral points.
As will be described below, each participating merchant has already agreed
with RPAS to pass on some percentage of whatever referral points it is
awarded. Suppose that the merchants m_1, m_2 and m_3 have agreed to pass
on 30%, 25% and 40%, respectively, of whatever referral points are awarded
to them.
Now suppose that a consumer visits the web sites of participating merchants
m_1, m_2, m_3 and m_4 in that order, although not necessarily
consecutively (i.e. the consumer might have also visited other web sites
in touring these four web sites). As the consumer visits each of these web
sites in turn, a checkpoint server 12 records the visit by entering either
mode 1, mode 2, or mode 3, as will be described below. In this scenario,
assume that the consumer does not click on an advertisement redirecting
the consumer to m_4, but instead simply visits m_1, m_2, m_3 and m_4 in
turn.
When the consumer computer 14 interfaces with the web site of m_4, the
visit prompts m_4's server to send a request to the checkpoint server 12
to issue z=10 referral points. The checkpoint server 12 (operating in mode
3 as described below) then makes available to the accounting server 10 the
recorded access information (i.e. that the consumer visited first m_1,
then m_2, and so on) as well as the quantity of referral points paid by
m_4. Finally, the accounting server 10 computes how to distribute the
referral points. Based on the percentages of referral points m_1, . . . ,
m_4 have each agreed to pass on, the accounting server 10, tracing the
path of the consumer backwards from m_4, passes on 40% of 10 points (=4
points) from m_3 (leaving m_3 with 6 points), passes on 25% of 4 points
(=1 point) from m_2 (leaving m_2 with 3 points), and there being no more
participating merchants to reward, leaves the remaining 1 point with m_1.
It is important to note that nowhere in the example was there a requirement
that to earn a reward a merchant must have actually influenced the
consumer to visit, sooner or later, the web site of m_4. In fact, the
compensation would have been the same even if the consumer has ended up at
m_4's web site purely by chance, i.e. without any suggestion, direct or
indirect, by any of the "referring merchants" m_1, . . . , m_3. Thus, the
method of the present invention for rewarding a participating merchant is
based on the assumption that if a consumer visited the web site of a
participating merchant and then after not having visited too many other
web sites, ended up visiting a web site of a paying merchant, the
participating merchant was part of the stream of influence that swept the
consumer onto the web site of the paying merchant, and should therefore be
awarded. In the best mode, a participating merchant would not receive a
distribution of the referral points unless the consumer first visits a web
site of the participating merchant, and then visits less than a certain
pre-determined number of web sites of participating merchants, not
necessarily different web sites, before visiting the web site of the
paying merchant.
In another embodiment of the present invention, in order to foreclose as a
possibility that a participating merchant would receive all of a
distribution of referral points because a consumer repeatedly visits a web
site of the participating merchant and then finally visits the web site of
the paying merchant, the referral points are distributed to a
pre-determined number of different participating merchants. In this
embodiment, for purposes of determining whether a particular participating
merchant should receive a distribution of the referral points, only the
last visit by a consumer to a web site of the participating merchant is
taken into account.
In another embodiment, as an alternative to setting a cap on the number of
last-visited participating merchants to which referral points are
distributed, the present invention also comprehends setting a time limit
on when a consumer can have visited a participated merchant and then have
visited a paying merchant, to determine whether to award any referral
points to the participating merchant. In yet another embodiment, there is
both a time limit and a cap on the number of participating merchants that
will receive a distribution of any referral points. In this, it is
possible that a single participating merchant would receive all of a
particular issue of referral points (if a consumer visits only the single
participating merchant in the pre-determined time before visiting the
paying merchant), and it is also possible that sometimes no referral
points are awarded because no participating merchants satisfy the criteria
for receiving a portion of an issue of the referral points.
In the best mode, with each participating merchant in the merchant database
(maintained by the merchant database server 11) there are associated
various items of information, including:
a) a pass-on percentage, indicating, in a distribution of referral points,
the percentage of the referral points received by the merchant that the
merchant will pass on to other participating merchants;
b) a checkpoint universal resource locator (url), i.e. a network address of
the checkpoint server to be used by the merchant (not needed if all
merchants use the same checkpoint server); alternatively, instead of a
checkpoint url, a checkpoint server domain name (i.e. an alias for a url);
c) at least one gateway url, i.e. a network address specified by the
merchant to be the url of a web site of the merchant (the database
accommodates a merchant having multiple web sites by using a relational
database structure);
d) an account balance, indicating the current total number of referral
points earned by the merchant (and not yet redeemed); and
e) a merchant identification, as a string of characters unique to the
merchant, used for identifying the account holding the referral points for
the merchant.
In the preferred embodiment, a merchant registers with RPAS (e.g. via
phone, fax, email, or web) and selects a pass-on percentage. Each
participating merchant then designs its web sites to trigger access by a
consumer to the merchant's checkpoint server, using known methods of
redirection in which a consumer is caused to access a merchant's
checkpoint server by providing the consumer's computer with the checkpoint
url, along with appended information.
In the preferred embodiment, a checkpoint server can operate in any of
three modes whenever a consumer visits a participating or paying merchant.
The particular mode used by the checkpoint server depends on what
merchants the consumer visits. In the preferred embodiment described here,
the consumer visits web sites on the Internet and accesses web pages of
servers operated by participating and paying merchants. The different
modes will be here described in the preferred embodiment.
Mode 1 is entered by an RPAS checkpoint server when a consumer accesses a
specially programmed web page of a participating merchant. The
participating merchant will have embedded in the web page a data object
that must be retrieved from a server operated by the RPAS in order for a
browser, operated by the consumer on the consumer's computer, to build up
the web page on the consumer's computer. The retrieval of such a data
object from an RPAS server provides RPAS with the information it needs to
track the consumer, i.e. to note that the consumer visited the particular
participating merchant at a particular time. Mode 3 is entered in
circumstances identical to those of mode 1, except that in mode 3 the
consumer has visited a paying merchant, instead of a web page of merely a
participating merchant. (Remember, both participating and paying merchants
are "registered" with RPAS, and a registered merchant can be either a
paying merchant or a participating merchant, depending on whether a
consumer accesses a web page for which the registered merchant has agreed
to award referral points.)
Mode 2 is entered by an RPAS checkpoint server when a consumer visits a web
page of a participating merchant who embeds in the web page a data object
that directs the consumer to another participating merchant, in what
amounts to a true referral, but that first directs the consumer to an RPAS
checkpoint server so that RPAS can note that the consumer first visited to
the referring participating merchant, and then visited the referred to
participating merchant.
In mode 1, the url of the checkpoint server provided to the consumer
computer is followed by appended information that includes the
identification of a single registered merchant, and the checkpoint server
records that the consumer visited the identified merchant. Additionally,
the checkpoint server sets a cookie (the persistent data object described
above) on the consumer computer; the cookie has a timestamp and has the
merchant identification appended to it. In applications where security is
an important enough issue, the cookie is either encrypted or followed by
an authentication string. After setting the cookie, the checkpoint server
returns to the consumer computer a data object (essentially a web page and
any associated information and scripts).
In mode 2, the checkpoint server address is followed by the identification
of two registered merchants. The checkpoint server records that the
consumer visited the first merchant, and then proceeded to the second
merchant. Additionally the checkpoint server sets a cookie, with a
timestamp and the two merchant identifications appended, on the consumer
computer. The checkpoint server returns to the consumer computer data
including a redirection causing the consumer computer to access the
gateway url of the second merchant.
In mode 3, the checkpoint server address is followed by the identification
of a single participating merchant and a number of referral points. The
address also includes, in the best mode, a maximum number of participating
merchants whom the paying merchant will compe | | |
