Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ehr-Chun Yeh

Shaoyu Zhou

Mario Esposito

Lei Jin

Fei Cao

Sijian Zhang

Systems, methods, and computer storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that maintain a targetable user inventory for digital advertising. In embodiments, a request is made for user data associated with a user identification. If the user data or user identification is not available, a list of alternative user identifications is ranked according to various criteria based on identification signals. A match is selected from the list of alternative user identifications and user data associated with the alternative user identification is communicated in response to the request.

Maintaining targetable user inventory for digital advertising

Described herein is an in-text advertising display that presents web advertisements contextually related to retrieved web content about text on a web page. The text of a web page is analyzed to determine whether terms or phrases are associated with particular contextual definitions called entities. Portions of text associated with an entity are emphasized to the user. Detection of a user trigger event initiates retrieval of additional web content about the emphasized text and the retrieved additional content is displayed in a display window, within a pop-up advertisement, or within a quickbar window. An adjacent seamless window displaying web advertisements related to the additional web content is also presented to the user.

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Newcastle, WA, United States of America

Ehr-Chun Yeh