Techniques are disclosed utilizing cognitive computing to improve banking experiences. A user's financial account(s) and location may be monitored to predict when a user is near a retail store and the user has not used a particular account in a predetermined amount of time. The techniques disclosed include receiving a location for a user's mobile device, and determining when the mobile device is within a predetermined threshold distance of a retail store. The techniques include building a shopping profile for the user based upon shopping habits for the user. The shopping profile may be used to determine what commercial communications should be transmitted to the user to encourage them to utilize an inactive account to make a purchase at the retail store when the user is within the threshold distance of the retail store.

A broadcast response system provides, e.g., a radio broadcast listener with the ability to obtain media content such as music or speech while listening to the radio. The user can respond to items in the radio broadcast such as advertisements, fund raising drives, or interactive listener polls during the broadcast. Data such as song title and artist, author or publisher and the IP address for the location where the digital version of the content is stored, can be transmitted using, e.g., the RBDS/RDS data stream. A reference number representing song title and artist, author or publisher and the IP address for the location where the digital version of the content is stored can also be employed for ease of implementation. This reference number can reside in a lookup table to be accessed by broadcast response server.

Methods and systems for performing an advertisement-based electronic transaction are provided. According to one aspect, a system for performing an advertisement-based electronic transaction comprises a mobile backend server comprising a network interface, one or more processors, and memory. The mobile backend server receives, from a first electronic device, first information for identifying the user and second information for identifying an advertisement; identifies the user based on the first information; identifies an advertisement based on the second information; identifies a transaction object associated with the identified advertisement; determines transaction information for an electronic transaction involving the identified transaction object; determines payment information for the identified user; and initiates an electronic transaction using the transaction information and payment information. The first electronic device may be a mobile phone that captures the second information by scanning a QR code or by displaying an advertisement that the user clicks, touches, or otherwise selects.

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, a machine-readable storage medium that includes executable instructions that, when executed by a processing system, facilitate performance of operations which include modifying advertising content at a display responsive to a person being determined to be in a first zone relative to the display, determining a presence of a communication device of the person, wherein the second zone is closer in range to the display than the first zone, transmitting a query to the communication device, receiving from the communication device the identifying characteristic of the person, obtaining an image of the person responsive to the person being determined to be in a third zone relative to the display, wherein the third zone is closer in range to the display than the first zone and the second zone, and obtaining modified content for the person based on the identifying characteristic.

An enhanced beacon system that detects attributes of a user based on information obtained from or about a user device when the user device is in close proximity to a beacon device. Actions include receiving a first unique identifier of the user device and the user's information collected the beacon device. The user information can include at least attributes associated with physical movements of the user. The user information can be used to populate a user profile for the user. A campaign can be estimated for the user and transmitted to the user device based on at least partly on a calculation of attributes from the user information in the user profile and target criteria of the campaign.

A system and method for displaying content on disposable packaging includes a display board, such as a light emitting diode display board, embedded within or on the product package. While the product package will include various electronic components, the packaging itself is without an integrated power source sufficient to provide power throughout the life of the product package. Rather, an external power source is provided in close proximity to the packaging to provide electrical power. The package's electronic components include components for wireless communication with nearby electronic devices, such as mobile phones. The nearby electronic devices will provide data to the package to cause the display board to display content dynamically to nearby users. The content displayed may be dependent upon the type of product, data about the user, and third party consumer data.

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, a method for processing an advertising request message, including, receiving an advertising request message from a mobile device, determining if an advertising exchange server associated with the advertising request is permitted to receive enhanced information associated with the mobile device if a service provider is permitted to provide location information associated with the mobile device responsive to determining that the advertising exchange server associated with the advertising request is permitted to receive the enhanced information, responsive to determining that the service provider is permitted to provide location information, adding location information associated with the mobile device to a header of the advertising request message, and transmitting the advertising request message to the advertising exchange server. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A device to deliver data to a network may be identified. The data to be delivered may be identified. Information associated with a device's probability of travelling to the network may be identified. Based on that information, the data to be delivered may be transferred to the device.

A system may generate abstracted graphs from a social relationship graph in response to a query. A query may identify a person for which permission has been obtains to collect their data. The abstracted graphs may include summary statistics for various relationships of the person. The relationships may include other persons, places, things, concepts, brands, or other object that may be present in a social relationship graph, and the relationships may be presented in an abstracted or summarized form. The abstracted form may preserve data that may be useful for the requestor, yet may prevent the requestor from receiving some raw data. When two or more people have given consent, the data relating to the consenting persons may be presented in a non-abstracted manner, while other data may be presented in an abstracted manner.

Embodiments are directed to communicating with and controlling operation of electronically-controlled appliances. In one scenario, a computer system receives a first input from a computing system indicating that an electronically-controlled appliance is permitted to communicate with a cloud computing platform. The computer system generates a notification that is to be sent to a software application, where the software application is configured to control functions of the electronically-controlled appliance. The computer system transmits the generated notification to the software application, where the generated notification indicates that the cloud computing platform is communicably connected to the electronically-controlled appliance. The computer system then receives a second input from the software application indicating that specified functions are to be performed on the electronically-controlled appliance, and transmits instructions to the electronically-controlled appliance to perform the specified functions. These functions are then interpreted and carried out by a hardware controller on the electronically-controlled appliance.