This application relates to apparatus and methods for automatically determining and providing personalized digital recommendations including sponsored items. In some examples, a computing device receives a recommendation request. In response, the computing device determines an initial set of items for recommendation based on a relevance of associated items to the user and potential revenue from user interactions with the associated items. The computing device then generates final item recommendations by replacing at least one item of the initial set of items with a closest sponsored item that is selected based on a similarity of the closest sponsored item to the corresponding item. The final item recommendations are then presented to the user.

A computer-implemented method of providing information about an individual product includes: using a product information server comprised in a product information system, deciding, by the product information system, using the product information server, an application by a system applicant applying to register as a system user of the product information system; creating, by the product information system, using the product information server, a product passport configured to provide item-specific product information regarding a unique individual product; populating the product passport, by the product information system, using the product information server, with item-specific product information regarding the product; receiving from a system user, by the product information system, using the product information server, a user request for item-specific product information regarding the product; providing, by the product information system, the item-specific product information to the system user; and recording, by the product information system, a product transaction involving the product.

The disclosed subject matter relates to a system and method for selecting/recommending ads based on a contextual bandit approach. The disclosed approach leverages various embedding vectors of item, search, page taxonomy trained based on traffic data via advanced deep learning models, and uses model signals (e.g. historical CTR, item price, rating, quality) from other ad placements. The learning mechanism on top of the current methodology to automatic chooses the best feature sets and adjust model performance over time. The contextual bandit model performs better with respect to CTR than the Thompson Sampling model, and achieves lower regret and faster convergence over time.

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.

Embodiments provide a social networking platform offering various services, such as, facilitating aggregation and management of a user's interaction on one or more social networking platforms, offering enhanced control over the level of privacy associated with the flow of user data, offering tools to customize the user's exposure to advertisement-related content on the social networking platform(s), integrating features to control aspects of how data/content is presented to and visualized by the user, empowering the user to multicast direct messages to other users without the other users having to meet certain constraints, empowering the user to create and/or join a group based on messaging threads, and the like. One or more of these enhanced services/features are associated with a powerful framework of authentication/permission model for access control.

Embodiments provide a social networking platform offering various services, such as, facilitating aggregation and management of a user's interaction on one or more social networking platforms, offering enhanced control over the level of privacy associated with the flow of user data, offering tools to customize the user's exposure to advertisement-related content on the social networking platform(s), integrating features to control aspects of how data/content is presented to and visualized by the user, empowering the user to multicast direct messages to other users without the other users having to meet certain constraints, empowering the user to create and/or join a group based on messaging threads, and the like. One or more of these enhanced services/features are associated with a powerful framework of authentication/permission model for access control.

Various embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods, apparatuses, systems and computer program products that are configured to select an image associated with a promotion for presentation to a consumer. In an embodiment of the method includes associating a promotion with at least one set of images of a plurality of images, receiving at least one user selection indication, updating a user record based on the at least one user selection indication, selecting, using a processor, at least one image from the at least one set of images for presentation in association with the promotion based at least in part on the user record, and causing a transmission of the selected at least one image in association with the promotion.

A method, apparatus, and computer program product are disclosed to improve generation of electronic communications. The method may provide a plurality of content slots each configured to receive content, the content comprising at least one of promotion content or non-promotion content. The method may also include maintaining a database comprising a plurality of promotion content generators and non-promotion content generators, and determining, using a processor, one of the plurality of promotion content generators or non-promotion content generators for respectively supplying corresponding promotion content or non-promotion content to each of the plurality of content slots. The determining the one of the plurality of promotion content generators or non-promotion content generators may include determining selection parameters, and scoring the plurality of promotion content generators and non-promotion content generators based at least in part on the selection parameters.

A method for matching a user to a service provider, comprising: obtaining a user profile for a user capturing at least one of: a sought service type, service quality, service speed, a risk niche, a demographic niche, a socio-economic niche, a quote acceptance likelihood, a binding likelihood, and an expected life time value; obtaining multiple service provider profiles capturing at least one of: an offered service type, service quality, service speed, a target risk niche, a target demographic niche, a target socio-economic niche, a quote acceptance threshold, a binding threshold, and an expected user life time value threshold; matching the user with at least one service provider by fitting the respective profiles; presenting the matched service provider to the user; receiving a confirmation; establishing a channel between the user and the matched service provider; and providing at least one aspect of the user profile to the matched service provider.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure present methods and systems for measuring an interaction level between a user interface and a remote server and charges for the interaction. In some embodiments, a connection may be established between a user device accessing a piece of content and a remote server configured to communicate with the user device interactively about a piece of content pertaining to a second server. In some cases, the communication between the second server and the user device can be in response to an indication of interest in the piece of content from a user of the user device. In some embodiments, the second server may measure the level of interaction between the user via the user device and the second server, and report the measure to the first server. A health application may include measuring interactions between a host website, user device, care provider device, pharmacy device, and service coordinator.