System for and method of generating advertising inventory by marketers sharing content with others

摘要

A system and method of generating advertising inventory by marketers sharing content with others via a social network or other electronic communication across a network. This embodiment may include allowing one or more content providers, such as a publisher, to provide links to content items, such as articles, news stories, videos, etc. The content items may be provided directly by the content provider or by a clearinghouse entity or other intermediary. A subscriber, such as an advertiser or marketer, may then search for relevant content items from one or more content providers. The subscriber may provide ancillary content, such as an advertisement or other electronic content, for association with the selected content item. Thus, when the subscriber shares a URL identifying the selected content item, such as an article, via a social network, the URL may be encoded with a unique identifier identifying the subscriber. When the URL is clicked by a user, an ad server on the publisher's side may recognize the unique identifier and display the content item with the ancillary content provided by the subscriber.

主权项

1. A method of associating ancillary content with content items from one or more content providers, the method comprising:
transmitting to a content server apparatus a first request message comprising a first resource identifier (RI) comprising a content identifier associated with the content item; as a consequence of transmitting the first request message to the content server apparatus, receiving, from the content server apparatus the content item; modifying the first RI to generate a modified RI, the modified RI comprising the content identifier and an ancillary content provider (ACP) identifier associated with an ancillary content provider, wherein the first RI did not contain the ACP identifier and modifying the first RI to generate the modified RI comprises adding the ACP identifier to the first RI; transmitting from a first computer to a social networking server apparatus a message comprising the modified RI, wherein the social networking server apparatus is configured to provide the message to end-users of the social networking server apparatus; receiving at the content server apparatus a second request message transmitted by an end-user computer, the request message comprising the modified RI; and the content server apparatus, in response to receiving the request message, i) selecting ancillary content associated with the ACP identifier and ii) transmitting to the end-user computer information for causing the end-user computer to display a user interface comprising the content item and the selected ancillary content associated with the ACP identifier.