The current document is directed to methods and systems that receive instrumentation-generated events and that employ statistical inference to discover event topics and to assign an action to each of a number of events and that use the actions to predict future events and actions. In a described implementation, accumulated action messages are used to build a predictive model for each monitored website and the predictive model is used, in turn, to predict future actions based on already received actions.

A method for determining effectiveness of placing promotion information includes: characteristic information sent by multiple terminals is received to obtain multiple pieces of characteristic information, the characteristic information being obtained by monitoring promotion information by the terminals respectively and the characteristic information including specified accounts of a social application or terminal information; statistics on a total number of exposures of and a total number of clicks on the promotion information is made based on the characteristic information; user attributes corresponding to the terminals are determined to obtain multiple user attributes based on the characteristic information; statistics on a number of hit exposures of the promotion information is made based on the multiple user attributes and a target user attribute of the promotion information; and effectiveness of placing the promotion information is determined based on the number of hit exposures, the total number of exposures and the total number of clicks.

A system for classifying and managing keywords across multiple campaigns comprises a classification manager, a bid management system, a web analytics tool and a search engine. The classification manager interfaces with the bid management system and the web analytics tool to provide user interfaces for reviewing data about specific keywords across multiple campaigns. The classification manager includes a classification keyword repository, a classification creation module, a classification measurement module and a classification user interface module for generating the user interface. This is particularly advantageous because statistics corresponding to keywords can be classified across multiple campaigns to provide greater flexibility in the analysis of web data. The present invention also includes a novel method for the classification of keywords across multiple campaigns.

Embodiments are disclosed for automated evaluation of compatibility of a data structure with a user device. An example method includes receiving, by communications circuitry, a set of user device characteristics regarding the user device, and retrieving, by the personalization circuitry, a set of data structure characteristics regarding the data structure. The example method further includes calculating, by the personalization circuitry, a set of characteristic-level compatibility scores, and generating, by the personalization circuitry and based on the set of characteristic-level compatibility scores, a compatibility score for the data structure and the user device. Subsequently, the example method includes generating, by an aggregator and using the generated compatibility score, an indication of relative compatibility of the data structure for the user device, and causing transmission, by communications circuitry, of a control signal to the user device based on the indication of relative compatibility. Corresponding apparatuses and computer program products are also provided.

Data for a plurality of entities that can be offered a plurality of products can be obtained. The data can include categorical data and numeric data. Based on business constraints, some of all of the data can be selected. The selected data can be converted to another set of numeric data, wherein the categorical values are converted to numeric values. Dimensions of the converted data can be reduced to generate another set of data. Based on this another set of data, clusters of entities can be formed. The products can be grouped by assigning a unique product identifier of each product to a corresponding cluster. This grouping of products can be used by a predictive model to predict a likelihood of an entity to purchase a particular product in a future time period. Related methods, apparatus, systems, techniques and articles are also described.

A method for representing and managing an inventory of overlapping multi-dimensional items such as advertising or ad impressions. The method uses an inventory management module to generate unique segment identifiers for sets of inventory items by processing descriptions of the sets of impressions including defining criteria. The method includes processing the unique segment identifiers to create a representation of the inventory as a plurality of inventory regions, which may include non-overlapping regions that correspond to inventory items in a single set of the inventory and also include overlapping regions that correspond to inventory items in two or more of the sets (e.g., items that match two or more sets of defining criteria or attributes). Availability and selection of inventory is determined using the information on inventory regions to control effects of cannibalization, such as by implementing logically necessary allocation to only cannibalize a region on a limited or forced basis.

A system and method is provided for adding at least one advertisement to a personal communication and providing additional communication data to a recipient that interacts with the advertisement. A sender network device communicates with an advertising application operating on a Web site to generate a personal communication containing at least one advertisement, where the at least one advertisement is selected from a palette of advertisements. In one embodiment of the present invention, the sender has control over advertisements that are displayed together with the personal communication by allowing the sender to delete (or remove) an advertisement from either the at least one advertisement or the palette of advertisements. If a displayed advertisement is interactive, and the advertisement is interacted with, the advertising application will provide the recipient with additional communication data in a format that can be understood by the recipient network device.

A method and system for placement of graphical objects on a page to optimize the occurrence of an event associated with such objects. The graphical objects might include, for instance, advertisements on a webpage, and the event would include a user clicking on that ad. The page includes positions for receipt of the object material. Data regarding the past performance of the objects is stored and updated as new data is received. A user requests a page from a server associated with system. The server uses the performance data to derive a prioritized arrangement of the objects on the page. The objects are arranged according to a calculation and returned to the user on the requested page.

Embodiments of the invention provide a computer-implemented method of participating in a web-based content provision process, e.g. an ad-bidding process for proposing an ad to serve for an ad impression. The method can include recording physical behavioural information, e.g. emotional state, attentiveness, gaze tracking, etc., to infer or further refine a user profile for a user or to establish or further refine a target profile for a piece of media content, e.g. an advertisement. A quantitative indicator can be obtained by comparing user profiles with target profiles, which can be used to automate the content provision process. The process can use a plurality of preset user types and a plurality of preset ad target types, whereby each user is allocated to one or more of the preset user types and each ad is allocated to one or more of the preset ad types.

Systems, methods, and devices relating to automatic facial detection and age and/or gender determination. An image source provides a sequence of images of an audience. Each image is analyzed to detect each face in the image. Specific features of each face are then extracted and, from these features, the gender and/or age of the face is determined by referring to previous determination results. Once the age and/or gender of the audience has been determined, a server can then select which advertisement spots can be presented to the audience. This may be done by having the server request access to a database of available advertising spots, submits specific parameters as the basis for the selection of the advertisement. Image source, image processing subsystems, advertisement displays and advertisements databases can be collocated or distributed over various network resources.