Advertising inventory allocation

US8615436B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Google LLC · US

Inventors

• Steve Stukenborg · Mountain View, US
• Daniel J. Zigmond · Menlo Park, US
• Jason Bayer · San Francisco, US
• Danny Tom · Hayward, US
• Kaustuv Kaustuv · Palo Alto, US
• Jagpreet S. Duggal · Seattle, US
• Robert D. Gardner · Fort Collins, US
• Deepak Chandra · San Jose, US
• Neil Rhodes · Evanston, US
• Noam Nisan · Jerusalem, IL
• Tal Franji · Hod HaSharon, IL
• Misha Seltzer · Toronto, CA
• Hal R. Varian · Danville, US
• Yossi Matias · Nes Ziona, IL

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 16, 2009
• Grant date: Dec 24, 2013
• Expiry date: Dec 28, 2030

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q30/08
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A simultaneous ascending price auction (“SAA”) can be used to allocate advertising inventory to bidders. The advertising inventory can be, for example, radio or television advertisement spots (“spots”). The bidders can be advertisers that can provide advertisements for presentation in the spots. Two or more contiguous spots can define an advertising block. Spots or advertising blocks can be allocated to advertisers by the SAA mechanism based on bid criteria. The SAA can perform simultaneous advertisement scheduling and pricing. The auction allocation can be optimized to facilitate efficient allocation of advertisements to spots or blocks.