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AN OVERBROAD PATENT FOR ONLINE ADVERTISING - This application from Facebook seeks to patent the idea of... suggesting changes to your advertising campaign based on the performance of your current campaign! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents HERE

QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before Dec, 2011 that discusses:

  1. Measuring the performance of an initial online advertisement; AND
  2. Suggesting changes to targeting criteria an advertiser might use to increase its performance;

If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question.. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual.

EXTRA CREDIT - A reference to anything that meets all of the criteria to the question above AND ALSO uses click-through rate, conversion rate or brand lift rate as a measurement of performance of the advertisement.

TITLE: Adjusting an Advertising Campaign

Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method of adjusting an online advertisement which uses click-through-rate, conversion rate, brand-lift rate or any other measurement of an initial advertisement to suggest new targeting criteria to the advertiser.

  • Publication Number: US 20130151332 A1
  • Application Number: 13/316,493
  • Assignee: Facebook, Inc
  • Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating December 10, 2011
  • Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through Dec 13, 2013

Claim 1 requires each and every step below:

A method comprising:

  1. Receiving, at a publishing system from an advertiser, data for an advertising campaign comprising an initial ad and targeting criteria defining an initial target group for receiving the initial ad;

  2. Providing the initial ad for display to a plurality of users in a plurality of segments of the initial target group;

  3. Determining, by the publishing system, a value of an advertising metric for a first one of the plurality of segments based on the display of the initial ad to the users of the first segment;

  4. Based on the value of the advertising metric, determining by the publishing system a suggestion for the advertiser to modify the targeting criteria to remove the first segment from the targeting criteria to be used for the initial ad; and

  5. Sending the suggestion from the publishing system to the advertiser.

In English this means:

A method of suggesting adjustments to an advertising campaign, comprising:

  1. Receiving an initial advertisement and proposed targeting criteria from an advertiser

  2. Displaying the initial advertisement to the target group using the targeting crtieria

  3. Measuring something (anything!) about the performance of the initial advertisement

  4. Suggesting that the advertiser modify the targeting criteria to narrow which members of the target group see the advertisement.

Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to the December, 2011.

You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming a method using all of the steps above and using click-through rate, conversion rate or brand lift rate as a measurement of performance of the advertisement.

"Modifying ad campaign based on the performance of the ad" from Figures of Application

What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.

Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.

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  • Porno, www.pornelits.com This product uses "ads are answers" to allow a customer to refine targeting criteria for an ad campaign.
    – user7321
    Dec 3, 2013 at 10:21

5 Answers 5

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USPTO already found the following prior art in their international search report:

I just thought of:

Christianson's goal seems similar to those in '332, i.e. to maximize the efficacity of a marketing message. Christianson broadcasts surveys and not ads, but everything else is there and we argue that an ad is just a minimal case for the survey optimization problem Christianson tries to solve, and '332 solution would seem obvious to a skilled in the art from Christianson's teaching.

Christianson's method comprises:

  1. Receiving, at a publishing system from an advertiser, data for an advertising campaign comprising an initial ad (creating at least one marketing message corresponding to the promotional item [claim 1]) and targeting criteria (impression criteria [claim 1]) defining an initial target group (selecting a target market group to market the promotional item [claim 1]) for receiving the initial ad;

  2. Providing the initial ad for display to a plurality of users (developing a communication plan to communicate the at least one marketing message to a subset of the target market group [claim 1]) in a plurality of segments (the marketer may select one or more target market groups in which to market the promotional item [0027]) of the initial target group;

    We argue that what Christianson calls target groups covers what '332 calls segments of target group based on the following definition from Christianson:

    The target market group is a group of potential consumers with at least one similar socio-demographic characteristic, such as, for example, age, sex, income, geographic location, or educational attainment. [0027]

    and various explanations of what segments are in '332 such as:

    In one embodiment, only attribute values within the group defined by the initial targeting criteria are considered. For example, if the initial targeting criteria limit the target group to females in general, or to females over age 30 located in the western United States, statistics are not tracked for segments containing males. In other embodiments, statistics may be tracked for segments with attribute values falling outside of the initial targeting criteria, as well. [0039]

  3. Determining, by the publishing system, a value of an advertising metric for a first one of the plurality of segments based on the display of the initial ad to the users of the first segment (analyzing the results received from the testing, wherein analyzing the results comprises calculating at least one score for the marketing message [claim 1])

  4. Based on the value of the advertising metric, determining by the publishing system a suggestion for the advertiser to modify the targeting criteria to remove the first segment from the targeting criteria to be used for the initial ad; (Similar comparisons may be viewed for other socio-demographic factors, such as income, location, education, race, etc. In this way, a more comprehensive picture of the marketing message's ability to generate WOM among and between certain subsets of a social group may be provided. [0084]) and

    We argue that suggesting to remove a group is not a technical feature and is obvious in view of Christianson

  5. Sending the suggestion from the publishing system to the advertiser. (data is analyzed and reported back to the marketer [0012, 0013 and 0014])

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Do these help?

http://www.ppcevolution.com/mikespecial/ - Dec 2010

"This top-of-the-line Adwords management software automatically adjusts your Adwords campaigns to make them profitable by decreasing or pausing traffic to keywords losing you money, while increasing traffic to keywords making you money – all on complete autopilot!"

And related:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Four-Steps-to-Automatic-PPC-Management-With-PPC-Evolution!&id=2465769 - Jun 12, 2009

From the website: "... Let's say you are spending $500/month and making $1000/month with your AdWords campaigns. Once you set it up (only minutes) the software automatically increases or decreases your keyword bids and budget to make every keyword either more profitable or less costly."

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Here is a link to the "Dynamic Search Ads" from google which is designed to respond to current search behavior and self-adjust. In addition it offers tracking and reporting facilities to monitor keyword campaign metrics so adjustments to targeting can be made.

This product uses "ads are answers" to allow a customer to refine targeting criteria for an ad campaign.

from the article "you get full reporting on searches that generated clicks, destination pages that matched ads, ad headlines that were generated, as well as average CPC, clicks, and conversions"

Here is the documentation for the conversion tracking tools in Google's display advertising suite. Where they specifically mention "it's easy to adjust your bids and targeting to get the most bang for your buck."

http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/manage-your-ads/measure-track.html

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This seems to me like just a special case of the already established feedback loop in enterpreneurship (and more specifically in the marketing business) - having an objective, scientific process of measuring the success of some method you are trying and improving it based on the feedback. This is very thoroughly examined as the lean startup methodology in a book by Eric Ries published in September 2011.

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I realise there are several better answers already, but I wanted to add that this is commonly called A/B testing (although the term is not specific to advertisements, more often related to online content in general).

The Wikipedia page for A/B testing suggests that "Amazon pioneered its use within e-commerce space", and references http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/02/26/amazon-shopping-cart/, which is a description of how the Amazon "add to cart" button evolved in response to user reactions.

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