A system and method for online marketing, comprises reading, by an electronic device, a machine-readable code corresponding to an object of interest or interpreting one or more characteristics of the object of interest itself in order to identify it; generating a request to a designated computer server for content related to the object of interest in response to processing a decoded address on the machine-readable code or the value of the one or more characteristics of the object of interest; and outputting a link to the content or outputting the content itself to a device in response to a receipt of the request.

A method implemented via execution of computing instructions configured to run at one or more processors and stored at one or more non-transitory computer-readable media. The method can include receiving, via a computer network, an ad request. The method also can include retrieving ad candidates from an ad database. The method further can include determining a respective ad ranking score for each of the ad candidates, based at least in part on the ad request and respective historical retrieval scores for each of the ad candidates. In some embodiments, each of the respective historical retrieval scores for each of the ad candidates is determined at least in part by a multi-channel search engine and a respective historical search query, by: (a) determining, by a semantic search model of the multi-channel search engine, one or more semantic search results from the ad candidates and a respective semantic ranking score for each of the one or more semantic search results, based on a respective query vector embedding of the respective historical search query and a respective ad vector embedding of each of the one or more semantic search results; (b) determining, by a syntactic search model of the multi-channel search engine, one or more syntactic search results from the ad candidates and a respective syntactic ranking score for each of the one or more syntactic search results, based on the respective historical search query; (c) unifying the respective semantic ranking score for each of the one or more semantic search results; (d) unifying the respective syntactic ranking score for each of the one or more syntactic search results; and (e) merging the one or more semantic search results and the one or more syntactic search results into one or more historical ad candidates based on the respective semantic ranking score, as unified, or the respective syntactic ranking score, as unified. The one or more historical ad candidates, as merged, can comprise the ad candidates, and each of the respective historical retrieval scores for each of the ad candidates can be the respective semantic ranking score, as unified, or the respective syntactic ranking score, as unified. The method additionally can include determining one or more ad finalists based at least in part on the respective ad ranking score for each of the ad candidates. Moreover, the method can include transmitting, via the computer network, the one or more ad finalists to be displayed on a user interface. Other embodiments are described.

The subject matter of this specification can be embodied in, among other things, a method that receives at a server a first request to rebroadcast a first sponsored content item that was displayed on the social network to the first user to a second user. A second request to display at least one sponsored content item to the second user when the second user accesses an electronic document associated with the social network is received at the server. The first sponsored content item is retrieved for rebroadcast from one or more sponsored content items indicated for rebroadcast to the second user. The first sponsored content item is output to the second user of the social network in response to the second request to display and without requiring the second user to select the first sponsored content item for display.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer-readable storage medium, for providing content. A method includes receiving a request for an advertisement to be displayed in a slot associated with a third-party content site; identifying a relevant advertisement to be provided in the slot; determining information to be included in an annotation associated with the advertisement; the annotation including customized information to be presented along with the advertisement; providing the advertisement responsive to the request including providing the annotation along with a control for re-publishing the advertisement along with the relevant advertisement; receiving user input selecting the control and designating the advertisement for re-publishing to a group, the group being designated by the user; and targeting additional content to the group based on the received user input.

Methods and systems of managing advertising content are shown and disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes outputting first multimedia content from a first channel, and outputting TAD content from a TAD channel instead of the first multimedia content during a TAD window of the first multimedia content. The method additionally includes receiving a first user input requesting multimedia content of a content channel different from the TAD channel during the TAD window, and outputting the multimedia content of the content channel instead of the TAD content in response to the first user input.

Consistent with disclosed embodiments, systems, methods, and computer readable media for electronic security systems for retail establishments may be provided. Embodiments may include an electronic article surveillance (EAS) gate and at least one receiver configured to receive transmissions from wireless tags associated with products offered by a retail establishment. Embodiments may also include at least one processor configured to receive, from a device operated by a prospective purchaser, a tag ID associated with a specific product for prospective purchase; perform a lookup of the tag ID in a data structure to identify the specific product; initiate an electronic purchase transaction to debit an account associated with the prospective purchaser for purchase of the specific product; and disable an ability to initiate an alarm when the at least one receiver receives a transmission from a tag associated with the specific product in proximity to the EAS gate.

Methods, apparatuses, and computer program products are provided herein to facilitate negotiation between consumers and merchants for promotions. In one embodiment, a method for generating promotion impressions is provided which includes receiving a consumer request for a promotion, wherein the consumer request comprises one or more indications of consumer preferences for the promotion and determining one or more potential merchants based in part on the consumer request. The method further comprises determining, for each potential merchant, if the potential merchant has pre-established promotion criteria that would meet the consumer request and if the potential merchant has pre-established promotion criteria that would meet the consumer request, storing promotion data for the potential merchant. The method further comprises, if the potential merchant does not have pre-established promotion criteria that would meet the consumer request, providing the consumer request to the potential merchant and, if a response is received from the potential merchant with promotion data, storing promotion data for the potential merchant. The method further comprises generating an impression comprising the promotion data for the one or more potential merchants. A corresponding apparatus and computer program product are also provided.

Auto-detecting an action on a merchant service and rendering an offer button to display an offer redeemable based on the action. A user accesses a merchant service and an indication of the action is communicated to an offer system that maintains an account for the user. The offer system determines whether the user has an offer applicable to a purchase with the merchant. The user device presents an offer button rendered to indicate that the first offer is available for redemption by the user. The user initiates an action on the merchant service and the user device communicates an indication of the action to the offer system. The offer system determines if the user has a second offer applicable to a purchase with the merchant based on the action taken by the user and the offer button is rendered to indicate that the second offer is available for redemption.

Methods and apparatus for determining a unique audience exposed to media while reducing memory resources of a computing device are disclosed herein. An example apparatus includes means for logging a plurality of impressions based on impression requests from a plurality of client devices, the plurality of impressions corresponding to media accessed at the client devices; means for obtaining counts, the obtaining means to: obtain a count of demographic impressions logged by a database proprietor; and obtain a count of registered users of the database proprietor exposed to the media; and means for determining a unique audience size by: multiplying a count of the plurality of impressions by a square of the count of the registered users to generate a product; dividing the product by the count of the demographic impressions to generate a quotient; and determining the unique audience size based on a square root of the quotient.

A sales enhancement system and method is disclosed. The sales enhancement system is configured to use one or more deal program collections, which are groupings or compilations of deal programs. The sales enhancement system manages deal programs in the deal program collections at various stages of use including: associating a deal program with multiple deal program collections; determining the number of deals to assign to the different deal programs; using triggers to select which deal program collections to access; transmitting an offer for a deal; and processing acceptances of the offers.