Budget smoothing in a messaging platform

US10650408B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Twitter, Inc. · US

Inventors

• Reid Marlow Andersen · San Francisco, US
• Parag Agrawal · Mountain View, US
• Ashish Goel · Stanford, US
• Utkarsh Srivastava · San Francisco, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 14, 2014
• Grant date: May 12, 2020
• Expiry date: Feb 13, 2036

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q30/0275
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A real-time messaging platform allows advertiser accounts to pay to insert candidate messages into the message streams requested by account holders. To accommodate multiple advertisers, the messaging platform controls an auction process that determines which candidate messages are selected for inclusion in a requested account holder's message stream. Selection is based on a bid for the candidate message, the message stream that is requested, and a variety of other factors that vary depending upon the implementation. The process for selection of candidate messages generally includes the following steps, though any given step may be omitted or combined into another step in a different implementation: targeting, filtering, prediction, ranking, and selection.