Ubiquitous Advertising on the WWW: Merging Advertisement on the Browser

by Youji Kohda and Susumu Endo

FUJITSU LABORATORIES LTD.

Profitable Advertising on the WWW

• Small "clickable" images have limited effectiveness:
  e.g.,

• Advertisement should reflect user's profile
• Advertisement should reflect currently viewed topic

Advertising Agents

• Clear distinction between ordinary Web sites and advertising Web sites
  • Agent Web server
  • Target Web server

Merging Advertisement on the Browser

• Augmented Web browser merges advertisements and target Web pages "on the fly"

New Advertising Framework

• Agent Web server
• Augmented Web browser

Augmented Web browser

• Know the access path to agent Web server
• Make simultaneous access to target Web server and agent Web server
• Inform agent Web server that "who" (user ID) accesses "where" and "what" (target URL)

Agent Web server

• Know user ID and target URL
• Return advertisement based on user ID and target URL
  • Advertisements can reflect user's profile
  • Advertisements can reflect currently viewed topic

Augmented Web browser

• Add advertisements to Web pages

Agent Web server

• Details (ads/orders) could be fetched through anchors in advertisements
• These actions taken by users are recorded and summarized as reference statistics

New Advertising Framework

1. Registration
2. Advertising
3. Financial structure
4. Competition
5. Advertising strategy examples

Registration

• Users register their personal profile / preferences
  • e.g., age, postal code / interests
• Advertisers register their advertisements with:
  • e.g., subject category index, target customers

Advertising

• Advertising agent sends advertisements to users on demand
• Advertising agent reports advertisement-reference statistics to advertisers

Financial structure

• Advertising agent offers some benefit to attract users
• Advertising agent obtains advertising fee from advertisers

Competition

• Should offer the best benefit to users
• Should offer the most cost-effective advertising to advertisers

Advertising strategy examples

1. Send advertisements fit to the currently viewed topic at some intervals
2. Insert the latest news/weather information instead of advertisements
3. Make counteroffers to "online shopping forms"

Prototype Implementation

1. Agent Web server
2. Augmented Web browser
3. Plug-in UNIX-type filters
4. Advertisement-supply filter

Agent Web server

• Collection of CGI programs written in Perl
  • Registration interface between an agent and advertisers
  • Registration interface between an agent and users
  • Advertisements delivery interface to users
  • Statistics report interface to advertisers

Augmented Web browser

• Invoke UNIX-type filters when anchors are clicked

Plug-in UNIX-type filters

• Invoked with target URL and user ID
• Input is a target Web page or an output from the preceding filter
• May access any other Web servers and/or local disks during transformation

Advertisement-supply filter

• Supplied by advertising agent to the customers
• Hence it knows contact path (URL) to agent Web server

Advertisement-supply filter

• Request agent Web server to send advertisements
• Merge advertisements into Web pages

Privacy Issue

• Agents should be forbidden to forward private customer information to the advertisers

Privacy Issue

• Advertisement-supply filter can be disabled anytime

Conclusion

• 1:1 advertising framework using Web Browser
• Prototyped the framework