Delivering targeted advertising to mobile devices
A method of delivering advertising items to a client at a portable device is provided. A client ID is sent to a host server. A downloaded advertising item is produced relative to a product or service from the host server. The downloaded advertising item is parsed and stored. In response to the parsing and storing, displaying the advertising item is displayed to the client at the mobile device.
1 . A method of delivering advertising to a client at a portable device, comprising:
sending a client ID to a host server;
producing a downloaded advertising item relative to a product or service from the host server;
parsing and storing the downloaded advertising item;
in response to the parsing and storing, displaying the advertising item to the client at the portable device.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the displayed advertising item includes at least one of, a list of merchants, special event data, a coupon, an ad, a contest, and a loyalty card.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the downloaded advertising item includes both layout and content information.
4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
downloading and installing a portable device application.
5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
running an application by the client that is prompted for the client's personalized information.
6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the personalized information is selected from at least one of the client's, zip code, age, gender, address, contact information, and preferences.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of producing the downloaded advertising item comprises:
processing data of the client's actions and the client's non-actions at the server from previous client activity;
updating the client's actions and non-actions for the advertising item and storing it at the host server;
in response to the updating, sending new advertising item to the client.
8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein in the step of parsing, the host server preformats the advertising item for easier client use.
9 . The method of claim 9 , wherein following the step of parsing, the client, tokenizes the advertising item, exams each of a header of a token to determine it's type, and then process according to type.
10 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of displaying the advertising item to the client at the portable device includes:
indicating, by the client, which content received to display next based on hard coded values or the client's input; and
loading the content and layout, by the portable device.
11 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
sorting through the layout, by the portable device, and replacing any variables in the layout with data from the content; and
adjusting any layout constants based on specific settings of the portable device.
12 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
passing the layout with the adjusted values to a controller of the portable device, the controller then following instructions in the layout, and the instructions then painting the data onto the screen;
accepting client input by the controller and applying instructions or commands in the layout to decided what to do next.
13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the steps in claims 11 , 12 and 13 are repeated for each screen that the client sees.
14 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
iterating over all of the elements in the layout; and
replacing any variables or constants found in the layout with data from the content of a configuration file of the portable device.
15 . The method of claim 14 , further comprising:
executing equations found to calculate final values of specific elements in the layout; and
looping objects that are duplicated based on the number of content objects that exist, each of a sub-loop element value being loaded from a specific sub-content object.
16 . The method of claim 12 , further comprising:
in response to client input to the portable device, the portable device then loading an appropriate set of commands from the active layout and then executing those commands.
17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein the commands are selected from at least one of those that can, cause storage operation, network operations, screen operations and flow control operations.
18 . The method of claim 16 , wherein the commands are executed by specific portable device phone threads.
19 . A method of producing a coupon recommendation to a client from a host with a host server, comprising:
loading client demographic and client historical data to the host server;
loading coupons from customers to the host server;
applying clustering scoring to the loaded coupons;
applying client request criteria to the coupons;
scoring and sorting the coupons based on the scoring to provide scored coupons; and
delivering selected coupon results from the scored coupons to a portable device of the client in response to the scoring and sorting.
20 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising:
applying demographic scoring criteria of the client to the coupons.
21 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising:
applying customer request criteria to the coupons.
22 . The method of claim 21 , wherein the step of applying customer request criteria includes:
loading customer contract information to the host server;
increasing or decreasing a coupon score based on the amount the customer pays for each coupon redemption an/or deliver; and
adjusting coupons scores in response to preferences provided by customers to the host server.
23 . The method of claim 22 , wherein , preferences include, placement of coupons in a ranked ordering, preferred coupon display location on a screen of the portable device, size and quantity of graphics used, fonts, and client alerts.
24 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the step of applying client preferences includes:
utilizing client preferences to adjust coupon scores.
25 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising:
utilizing client category preferences to adjust coupon scores.
26 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the step of loading coupons from customers to the host server includes:
selecting coupons that are currently valid in terms of date;
excluding coupons delivered to the client that are no longer available;
excluding coupons delivered to the client that are outside of a client's geographic region.
27 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the step of scoring and sorting the coupons includes:
combining previous scores applied to scored coupons and ranking the coupons with combined scores from highest to a lowest in terms of the score given; and
determining the number of coupons that the client's portable device can receive; and
delivering only the number of coupons to the client's portable device that the portable device is able to receive based on the ranking of the coupons from highest to lowest.
28 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising:
using data sources that are external to the host server to assist in the scoring of the coupons.
29 . The method of claim 28 , further comprising:
utilizing customer data relative a client to assist in scoring the customer's coupons for that client.
30 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the host server formats coupon data by compacts into a custom client language to provide for efficient parsing of data.
31 . The method of claim 19 , wherein prior to loading client demographic and client historical data to the host server, the following steps are taken:
processing data from the client that includes client interactions with coupons delivered by the host server;
checking for coupons to deliver or remove for that client; and
returning coupon data to a controller to add to return data.