Patent Issued for Targeted, competitive offers while browsing (USPTO 11301875): United Services Automobile Association

2022 APR 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Billman, Bradly Jay (San Antonio, TX, US), Eichler, Ronnie Allen (San Antonio, TX, US), Medina, III, Reynaldo (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on October 29, 2020, was published online on April 12, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11301875 is assigned to United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The effectiveness of Internet-based advertising depends largely on an advertiser’s ability to tailor its ads to a specific user. For example, a user residing in California is much more likely to patronize a drug store with locations only in California than is a user residing in Texas. Likewise, a retiree on a small, fixed income is much less likely to be interested in purchasing an expensive sports car than is a practicing physician who is earning a great deal of money. As such, on-line advertisers are frequently concerned with gaining information about users so that they can better determine what advertisements to present, so that their advertisements will be more effective. A problem exists because advertisers usually lack information about users.

“This problem is exacerbated where the terms of an advertised offer depend on characteristics of the user, such as with insurance. The rate and terms which an insurance company is willing to offer health insurance to a user can vary greatly based upon the user’s present health, medical history, age, dietary and physical exercise habits, and the like. It may be that, without knowing a sufficient amount of such information, an advertiser is unable to make an offer to an individual at all. This problem may be alleviated where the user already possesses an account with the advertiser (such as where the user has a health insurance policy and the advertiser is an insurance company) and the advertiser is able to use information taken from this account to more accurately determine the details of an offer to be made to the individual.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In example embodiments of the present disclosure, a method and system are provided to allow a company or entity that a user has an account with to provide targeted, competitive offers to that user while that user is accessing data on a communications network.

“The method may include, but does not require, an offer engine receiving from a user’s computing device browsing information about the user. The offer engine may receive this information in a variety of ways. For instance, it could function as a proxy that exists between the user’s computing device and other computing devices on the communications network, or it could communicate with a software program executing on the user’s computing device. The offer engine takes the browsing information and then determines a subject for the browsing information, determines a targeted offer (including specific details, such as price) based on the subject of the browsing information and the user’s account information. Finally, the offer engine sends to the user the offer.

“A system and computer readable medium are also disclosed that perform comparable functions as the method discussed above.

“The foregoing is a summary and thus contains, by necessity, simplifications, generalizations and omissions of detail. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the summary is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions for sending offers to a user who is viewing a web page through a web browser on a computing device of the user via an offer engine proxy device maintained by a third party, the offer engine proxy device being interposed between the computing device of the user and a destination web server, the instructions, when executed, causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: a) receive a first message comprising user browsing information from the computing device of the user; b) send the first message comprising the user browsing information to the destination web server; c) receive a resulting web page that corresponds to a web page requested by the user browsing information from the destination web server; d) determine at least one topic of the user browsing information; e) determine an offer to be sent to the user that is based on the at least one topic of the user browsing information; f) modify the resulting web page to include an offer to be sent to the user; and g) send a second message comprising the modified webpage including the offer to the computing device of the user across the computer network.

“2. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 1, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: h) access user information from an account of the user, wherein the account of the user is with the third party maintaining the offer engine proxy device.

“3. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 2, wherein the account of the user is related to a product provided to the user by an entity sending an offer to the user.

“4. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 3, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: wherein said determining the offer action e) further comprises the action of further determining an offer to be sent to the user that is further based on the user information from the account of the user, wherein the offer to be sent to the user has terms based upon the user information from the account of the user.

“5. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 2, wherein the offer comprises an offer to open a credit card, and wherein said user information from the account of the user further includes information as to the user’s credit history.

“6. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 2, wherein the account of the user is for an insurance product and the offer is an offer for insurance services.

“7. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 1, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, the action to modify the resulting web page to include the offer further includes: add a hypertext link to each occurrence of text of the topic in the resulting web page, wherein the hypertext link provides a mechanism for viewing the offer.

“8. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 1, wherein the offer engine proxy device has a communication link with the computing device of the user and a communication link with the destination web server across a computer network.

“9. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions for sending offers to a user who is viewing a web page through a web browser on a computing device of the user via an offer engine proxy device maintained by a third party, the offer engine proxy device being interposed between the web browser on the computing device of the user and a destination web server, the instructions, when executed, causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: a) receive a first message comprising user browsing information from the computing device of the user; b) send the first message comprising the user browsing information to the destination web server; c) receive a resulting web page that corresponds to a web page requested by the user browsing information from the destination web server; d) determine at least one topic of the user browsing information; e) determine an offer to be sent to the user that is based on the at least one topic of the user browsing information; f) modify the resulting web page to include an offer to be sent to the user; and g) send a second message comprising the modified webpage including the offer to the computing device of the user across the computer network.

“10. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 9, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: h) access user information from an account of the user.

“11. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 10, wherein the account is related to a product provided to the user by an entity sending an offer to the user.

“12. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 11, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, including: wherein said determining the offer action e) further comprises the action of further determining an offer to be sent to the user that is further based on the user information from the account of the user, wherein the offer to be sent to the user has terms based upon the user information from the account of the user.

“13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 10, wherein the offer comprises an offer to open a credit card, and wherein said user information from the account of the user further includes information as to the user’s credit history.

“14. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 10, wherein the account of the user is for an insurance product and the offer is an offer for insurance services.

“15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 9, the instructions, when executed, further causing the offer engine proxy device to carry out at least the following actions, the action to modify the resulting web page to include the offer further includes: add a hypertext link to each occurrence of text of the topic in the resulting web page, wherein the hypertext link provides a mechanism for viewing the offer.

“16. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 9, wherein the offer engine proxy device includes a local offer engine stored and executing on the computing device of the user.

“17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 16, wherein the offer engine proxy device includes a remote offer engine working in tandem with the local offer engine.

“18. A non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 9, wherein the offer engine proxy device includes a remote offer engine.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Billman, Bradly Jay. Targeted, competitive offers while browsing. U.S. Patent Number 11301875, filed October 29, 2020, and published online on April 12, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11301875.PN.&OS=PN/11301875RS=PN/11301875

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