Marin Software Incorporated

Bradford Flora

Jordan K Buller

Tony S Chan

Matt Ackley

Andrew Bissell

Anil Channappa

Francois Lagier

An ad facilitation server receives a definition of an audience from an advertiser, the definition expressed in terms of a URL that audience members have visited, such as a regular expression for URLs. Upon receiving a URL corresponding to a visit of a visitor to a page of the advertiser, the ad facilitation server determines whether the URL matches the audience definition provided earlier; if so, the ad facilitation server sends a request to a number of different ad publishers, requesting them to add the visitor to an associated audience. When an ad impression opportunity occurs on a particular ad publisher, the publisher considers bids previously submitted by the advertiser for the audience when selecting an ad for the ad impression opportunity. Thus, advertisers are enabled to bid on specific audiences defined by prior page visits, across a number of different ad publishers constituting different advertising channels.

Audience definition for advertising systems

Approaches for collaborative advertising bidding comprise receiving, from an ad exchange, a bid request for an advertisement space for a viewing user. The approaches further comprise retrieving logged data associated with the viewing user, the logged data corresponding to the viewing user's online exposure to web content including at least one of commercial webpages, online representations of services or products having purchase information, and advertisements. A first advertiser and a second advertiser who have entered into an advertising collaborating relationship to respond to bid requests are identified. A determination is made as to whether a portion of the retrieved logged data for the viewing user is associated with the first advertiser or with the second advertiser. Additionally, based on the determining, one of the first advertiser and the second advertiser is selected to submit a bid for the advertisement space in response to the bid request.

Automated selection of bidders for online advertisements using collaborative bidding rules

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Bradford Flora