USPTO Granted & Awarded Google Patent Number 8138930 For Advertising Based On Environmental Conditions

Recently, on 20th March, 2012 the USPTO granted google US based patent number 8138930 in the field of information management. The US based patent has been  titled “Advertising based on environmental conditions”. The patent application discloses information about an environmental condition of a remote device which is received an apparatus. The apparatus includes one or more processing devices. Particularly, the environmental condition is determined based on a signal output from a sensor of the remote device or a sensor coupled to the remote device. Further, an advertisement is identified based on the environmental condition, and the advertisement is provided to the remote device.

The background of the patent invention discloses “on-line advertisements which allow advertisers to reach a wide range of viewers through the Internet. The selection of advertisements for display, such as with search results and other information, and the ordering of those advertisements, may be achieved by various techniques. In one example, an initial determination is made to identify all advertisements that are a match or near match for the applied search terms or other query items or information. The match may be made, for example, between one or more words in a query, and key words identified by an advertiser and associated with a particular advertisement or group of advertisements, such as a campaign.

For example, a company selling fishing tackle may have a line of large lures, and may thus identify terms such as “lunker,” “sturgeon,” and “muskie fever” as keywords to associate with their advertisements for such large lures. Those advertisements may then be considered by the system for display when a search results are displayed to a user who enters such terms. The comparison may also be made between a search or query, and the text in an advertisement or the text in a target of a hyperlink in an advertisement, or to a combination of keywords, target text, and advertisement text, among other possible techniques. For example, the system may effectively select terms from an advertisement as key words so that the advertisement is selected for possible display when a search or other user action associated with the key words is submitted.

An advertisement may be selected for possible display if there is a “near” match also, for example, if a query includes terms that are known synonyms or mistypings /misspellings of the key word terms for an advertisement.”

Moreover, the summary of the patent specification discloses a system for allowing advertisers to target on-line advertisements based on environmental factors of end users. When determining what ads to serve to end users, the environmental factors can be used independently or in combination with matching of keywords associated with the advertisements and keywords in user search queries. A web browser or search engine located at the user’s site may obtain information on the environment (e.g., temperature, humidity, light, sound, air composition) from sensors. Advertisers may specify that the ads are shown to users whose environmental conditions meet certain criteria. For example, advertisements for air conditioners can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures above a first threshold, while advertisements for winter overcoats can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures below a second threshold.

The first independent claim of the US Patent application titled “Advertising based on environmental conditions” states:

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

               receiving, from a computing device, a search request comprising

                 (i)            information about a first environmental condition of the computing device, and

                   (ii)          one or more search terms;

        parsing the search request;

      selecting, from the search request based on parsing, the information about the first environmental condition;

       identifying an advertisement based on the first environmental condition and at least one of the one or more search terms;

       providing the advertisement to the computing device;

     receiving one or more of an audio signal, an image signal, or a video signal from a sensor of the computing device; and

      determining a second environmental condition based on the one or more of the audio signal, the image signal, or the video signal.

The second independent claim and it’s dependent claim of the US Patent application titled “Advertising based on environmental conditions” states:

2. A computer-implemented method comprising:

a.    receiving, from a computing device, a search request comprising

              (i)            information about a first environmental condition of the computing device, and

                 (ii)            one or more search terms;

b. parsing the search request selecting, from the search request based on parsing, the information about the first environmental condition;

c.  identifying an advertisement based on the first environmental condition and at least one of the one or more search terms;

d.  providing the advertisement to the computing device;

e. receiving an audio signal that comprises a voice instruction from a user of the computing device; and

f.  determining a second environmental condition based on background sounds in the audio signal.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising providing information in addition to the advertisement to the computing device used by the user based on the voice instruction of the user.

The third independent claim of the US Patent application titled “Advertising based on environmental conditions” states:

13. An apparatus comprising:

          one or more processing devices; and

     one or more machine-readable media configured to store instructions that are executable by the one or more processing devices to perform operations comprising:

          receiving, from a computing device, a search request comprising

one or more search terms;

          parsing the search request;

          selecting, from the search request based on parsing, the information about the first environmental condition;

         identifying an advertisement based on the first environmental condition and at least one of the one or more search terms;

          providing the advertisement to the computing device;

          receiving one or more of an audio signal, an image signal, or a video signal from a sensor of the computing device; and

          determining a second environmental condition based on the one or more of the audio signal, the image signal, or the video signal.

Furthermore, the patent also notes: This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/017,597, titled “ADVERTISING BASED ON ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS”

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