A method includes determining that an error has occurred. The error includes a hardware error in a computer, a network error in a network connected to the computer and/or a software error for software executing on the computer. The computer determines that the error has occurred. The method includes identifying a type of computer system in which the error has occurred. The computer system type includes a manufacturer and/or a brand for the computer. The method includes identifying, in response to determining that the error has occurred, an advertisement for a product or service relating to resolution of the error and to the type of computer system. The computer identifies the advertisement and generates an error message. The error message includes the advertisement and information regarding the error. The computer displays the error message with the advertisement on an electronic display connected to the computer.

Portable devices include environmental sensors that generate metrics about the environment (e.g., accelerometers detecting impulses and vibration, and GPS receivers detecting position and velocity). Such devices often use environmental metrics to extract user input directed at the device by the user, and status information about the device and the environment. Presented herein are techniques for using environmental metrics to infer physical activities performed by the user while attached to the device. For example, jogging may be inferred from regular, strong impulses and typical jogging speed; walking may be inferred from regular, weak impulses and typical walking speed; and riding in a vehicle may be inferred from low-level vibrations and high speed (optionally identifying the type of vehicle ridden by the user). Based on these inferences, the device may automatically present applications and/or or adjust user interfaces suitable for the user's physical activity, rather than responsive to user input.

A filtering machine receives sponsored content and filters the sponsored content according to a quality metric generated by quality model circuitry and assigned to the instance of sponsored content. The quality model circuitry generates the quality metric in accordance with historical feedback received about other sponsored content and a collection of quality factors pertaining to the sponsored content. Based on the quality metric for the sponsored content, the filtering machine can effect service of the sponsored content to a user device for display thereon.

Embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed herein enable automated and customized insertion of advertisements in real-time and in response to a request for a content file. Purveyors of content, such as audio and video, often use advertisements to ensure profitability. Embodiments enable users to customize the location(s) for advertisement insertion, and further embodiments allow for real-time insertion of ads, the ads can further be customized to the ad recipient. Real-time, automated delivery improves current technology in several ways by, for example, eliminating the need to manually inserting or choosing advertisements, customizing advertisement delivery to the content recipient, improving the speed of delivery of ad-supported content, giving users the ability to customize the location of advertisement insertion, thereby improving the final ad-supported product by inserting ads in logical, non-pre-planned locations of content files.

The systems and methods may be used to recommend an item to a consumer. The methods may comprise determining, based on a collaborative filtering algorithm, a consumer relevance value associated with an item, and transmitting, based on the consumer relevance value, information associated with the item to a consumer. A collaborative filtering algorithm may receive as an input a transaction history associated with the consumer, a demographic of the consumer, a consumer profile, a type of transaction account, a transaction account associated with the consumer, a period of time that the consumer has held a transaction account, a size of wallet, and/or a share of wallet. The method may further comprise generating a ranked list of items based upon consumer relevance values, transmitting a ranked list of items to a consumer, and/or re-ranking a ranked list of items based upon a merchant goal.

The invention provides, in some aspects, digital data processing methods of generating digital content pieces (e.g., email messages or portions thereof) that are customized in accord with individual recipient behaviors. Such methods include the step of generating and digitally transmitting to a digital data devices of a recipient a digital content piece that (i) has a call to action to which the recipient can respond and (ii) that has a plurality of features selected so as to maximize a probability, P(b.sub.1, b.sub.2, . . . , b.sub.M, x.sub.1, x.sub.2, . . . , x.sub.M) , that the recipient will respond to that call to action, where that probability is defined by the relation

P(b.sub.1,b.sub.2, . . . , b.sub.M, x.sub.1, x.sub.2, . . . , x.sub.M)=exp(.sub.j=1, . . . , Mb.sub.jx.sub.j)/(1+exp(.sub.j=1, . . . , Mb.sub.jx.sub.l)) where x.sub.1, x.sub.2, . . . , x.sub.M are values for each of a plurality, M, of features characterizing the digital content piece and/or the recipient, b.sub.1, b.sub.2, . . . , b.sub.M are respective coefficients for each of the values x.sub.1, x.sub.2, . . . , x.sub.M

Systems, methods and computer program products for providing an error-specific advertisement at a client computer. According to one embodiment, a method, implemented in a computer system, of providing an error-specific advertisement at a client computer is provided. The method may include determining that an error has occurred, identifying an advertisement for a product or a service relating to resolution of the error and/or generating an error message. The error message may include the advertisement and information regarding the error.

An ad is placed in a movie, by analyzing inherent characteristics of the movie, analyzing viewed characteristics of the movie, analyzing viewer characteristics of a viewer of the movie, obtaining advertiser preferences for placement of the ad in the movie, determining costs of placing the ad in the movie based on the inherent characteristics of the movie, the viewed characteristics of the movie, the viewer characteristics and the advertiser preferences, and placing the ad in the movie in accordance with the inherent characteristics of the movie, the viewed characteristics of the movie, the viewer characteristics, the advertiser preferences and the determined costs.

Exemplary systems and methods are provided for directing offer content to consumers at communication devices, while the consumers are at merchants. An exemplary method includes detecting an application identifier associated with a communication device at or near a merchant, and receiving signal strength records from the communication device indicative of signal strengths for wireless networking devices at a given time and associated with the application identifier. The method also includes accessing a zone map for the merchant that includes different zones each defining a position of at least one product, and plotting a path of the communication device, per given time, relative to the zone map. The method further includes displaying an offer for a product to the communication device, based on the path of the consumer through the merchant, along with other factors such as historical behavior patterns of the consumer, similar patterns from other consumers, etc.

Methods for A/B testing to evaluate the efficacy of an advertisement campaign are disclosed. An advertisement request is received via an IP network from a publisher connected to the IP network. The advertisement request comprises information including a device identifier of a device requesting a resource from the publisher over the IP network. A determination is made to respond to the advertisement request or not on the basis of the information in the advertisement request. In response to determining to respond to the advertisement request, a hash of the device identifier is evaluated to determine whether the device belongs to a control group or not. In response to determining that the device belongs to the control group, no response is made to the advertisement request.