AN ARCHITECTURE OF INTERACTIVE WEB ADVERTISING SYSTEM Hsiangchu Lai Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, R.O.C. E-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT There are more and more advertisements on the Web that has been claimed as the fifth medium. However, most of the advertising programs on the Web have not fully taken the advantages of the Web’s interactive capabilities. In this paper, first, we propose a classification framework of data requirements and mechanisms of interactive Web advertising. Then, we propose an architecture for interactive Web advertising based on a proposition that interactive advertising has to satisfy advertisers’ marketing objectives as well as consumers’ requirements. 1. MOTIVATION Due to the surprising growth of the Internet population, the World Wide Web has become a fantastic marketing channel. Among marketing activities, advertising might be one of the most popular activities and the one that can take the most advantages of specialties of the Web. For example, initial presence on the medium is relatively easy and inexpensive to establish [1]. The advantages include low cost, multimedia, interaction, easy maintenance, round-the-clock and worldwide presentation and almost unlimited advertising space, etc. Besides, Web advertising has ability of combing advertising and purchase behavior. Therefore, transactions can be executed immediately by consumers in response to ads [3]. It not only increases both speed and convenience of purchases but also reduces the risk of losing transactions.
Tzyy-Ching Yang Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, R.O.C. E-mail:
[email protected]
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We believe the interactive capabilities of the Web can improve advertising effects definitely. Novak and Hoffman [5] have proposed that the degree to which the visitor interacts with the target advertisement is a further measure of evaluating an advertisement. Such interactivity could be measured based on duration time viewing the advertisement, the depth or number of pages of the target advertisement accessed, or the number of repeat visits to the target advertisement.
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In order to fully utilize the Web interactivities to improve advertising effects, we need an architecture for interactive Web advertising to be a foundation of implementing interactive Web advertising. Here, we define interactive advertising as the way to expose advertisements based on situations such as customer data, type of visited homepages, special marketing programs. The paper will present a classification framework of interactive advertising to describe the data requirements and mechanisms and a system architecture for the guidance of building interactive Web advertising system. Hopefully, both can serve as foundations of fully utilizing the interactivity of the Internet on advertising.
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However, most of the current advertisements on the Web are almost same as those in traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radios, and televisions. All consumers are presented with same advertisements. In fact, the Web has many technical specialties in the interactivity. It can collect user data through online registration forms or questionnaires. It can monitor a user’s browsing behavior by setting cookie or analyzing log files. Deighton [2] defined interactivity by two features of communications: the ability to address an individual and the ability to gather and remember the response of that individual. Similarly, Gogan [4] refers interactivity to smart sellers rapidly determine potential customers’ salient preference and target them with relevant messages.
2. A CLASSIFICATION FRAMEWORK OF INTERACTIVE WEB ADVERTISING
In order to present different advertisements to each user based on his background and/or content of homepage to which the user is visiting, there must be data about the users, advertisements and homepages. Then, we can choose the most appropriate advertisement from the advertisement database based on the information about the user or the type of homepage that the user is visiting. Therefore, in addition to the above information, we also need a mechanism to decide to advertise what to whom at what time. Based on the above discussions, we propose a classification framework in Table 1 for the purpose of systemically discussing the data requirements and the possible mechanisms of interactive Web advertising.
Table 1: A Classification Framework of Data Requirements and the Mechanisms of Interactive Web Advertising user Data requirements
site Advertisement method
wprovided by users wmonitored by the Web server wmaintained by advertisers wmonitored by the Web server wmaintained by advertisers wmonitored by the Web server wbased on the advertiser’s
unilateral advertising decision
wbased on the user’s
Advertising mechanism
characteristics
wbased on the content of visited homepage timing target
wreal time wnon-real time windividual wgroup
2.1 Data Requirements Regarding user data, there are two methods of collection. One way is to ask users to fill in online registration form, questionnaires, and or collect messages from bulletin board system, etc. Another way is to monitor users’ online behavior without their notice. Web servers can automatically monitor information about users such as IP, country, browser, operating system type, and browsing activities by Web technologies, such as CGI programs, cookies, and WebTrends.
and “to whom” of an advertising action. That is, it decides to advertise what to a user when he visits a homepage or decides when the advertiser should send an advertisement to a target user. Therefore, any advertising mechanism should be able to deal with three issues: method for choosing an appropriate advertisement (what), timing of exposure (when), and target users (to whom). There are three methods for selecting an appropriate advertisement. First, it might be decided by the advertiser’s unilateral advertising decisions such as to give intensive advertisement on a new product. Another method is based on the user’s characteristics. That is, smart advertisers need to rapidly determine potential customers’ salient preference and target them with relevant message [4]. The third is based on the content of the visited homepages. The main reason is the information type of a visited homepage implies the user’s preference of the visitor.
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Regarding timing of exposing an advertisement, there are two kinds of timing: real time and non-real time. Real time exposure refers to expose advertisements to a user during his browsing. For non-real time advertising, it means the advertisers send advertising messages to potential customers proactively by e-mail when they think it is right time to do it. Another possibility is to use push technology to broadcast advertisements to users’ browsers.
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For the second type of data required for interactive Web advertising, it concerns about what the homepages are. Since the type of a visited homepage implies that it is interesting to that visitor, advertisers have to keep information about each homepage such as content type, file size, date of creation, visited frequencies. So, the system has to provide a good interface for managing and maintaining site database. For the purpose of reducing advertisers’ efforts, system may also be monitored automatically to filter the out of date homepages and correct linkages when it is needed.
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Finally, the last required data is about the advertisements themselves. For any advertising action, the main purpose is to present advertisements to as more consumers as possible. In order to present advertisement to the right potential consumer, an advertisement database including each advertisement’s type, number of exposure, content, creation date, promotion period, promotion priority, etc is required. Same as site database, it can be updated by advertisers or Web server. 2.2 Adver tising Mechanism An advertising mechanism is to decide “what”, “when”
The last issue is the target of interactive advertising. Advertisers can present an advertisement to an individual customer or an interest group. For targeting an individual, the mechanism of choosing advertisement is based on the individual’s characteristics. On the other hand, for targeting an interest group, the consideration of choosing an advertisement will base on the interest type of the whole group rather an individual [6]. A good interactive advertising system needs the ability of inferring a user’s characteristics and deciding the group he belongs to. 3. AN ARCHITECTURE FOR INTERACTIVE WEB ADVERTISING SYSTEM Based on the proposed classification framework of data requirements and mechanisms of interactive Web advertising, we propose an architecture for interactive Web advertising system as Figure 1. To satisfy the data requirements, there are three databases: user profile, site database, and advertisement database for keeping information about users, homepages in the Web site, and all advertisements separately. Furthermore, in order to let the proposed mechanisms work well, we propose six agents to collaborate with each other based on the advertising knowledge base.
Push Agent User
WWW Browser
Advertising Knowledge Base
Inference Agent
Interface Agent
Site Database
WWW Browser
Advertiser
Advertisement Database
Database Detection Agent User Analyzer Agent
Maintenance Agent
User Profile
exposing appropriate advertisements. The inference process is the core operation of an interactive Web advertising system. Finally, advertisements can be exposed to the users proactively when the advertiser thinks it is the right time to do. The push agent is designed for this purpose.
I nter active Web Adver tising System
4. CONCLUSIONS Figure 1: An Architecture for Interactive Web Advertising System Interface agent is responsible for collecting the user data and presenting the advertisements to users. Since there are diverse sources of user data, it has to decide to either update the user profile directly or ask the user analyzer agent to proceed further analysis. The responsibility of the user analyzer agent is to analyze a user’s background and online behavior to explore his preference or the interest group to which he belongs. The process of maintaining the user profile is described in Figure 2. If a user has registered, the interface agent can collect the user’s information from registration form, cookie, browsed advertisements, transaction records and online messages, etc. For the user who is the first time to visit the site, the interface agent may get the bookmark by asking the user to upload or capture the user’s registration information from his other software installations. If the user has visited before but not registered, its information can be got from cookies.
Has registered?
No
First visitor?
Yes
Yes
vIndividual’s data wregistration form wcookie wbrowsed advertisements wtransaction records wonline messages...
vbookmark vpersonal data of registering software
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There are some promising issues for future research. It’s important to measure the advertising effects of different interactive mechanisms. However, interactive advertising effect may not be clear in a short period. Hence, a careful longitudinal research design is required. It’s also interesting to discuss the appropriate applied condition of different rules in interactive Web advertising. Finally, how to apply artificial intelligence technology to learn users’ characteristics, decide the meta-rules, and maintain related database automatically would be a worthwhile research issue.
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Inter face Agent
Begin
This research has contributed to two aspects. First, we have provided a classification framework for discussing the two major tasks, data collecting and advertising mechanism, of an interactive Web advertising system. It could serve as a foundation of designing an interactive advertising plan. Second, we have proposed a system architecture for interactive Web advertising system. In the architecture, interface agent, user analyzer agent, inference agent, database detection agent, push agent and maintenance agent collaborate with each other following the rules in the advertising knowledge base. The user profile, site database and advertisement database are designed to match to the data requirements.
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5. REFERENCES
User Profile
[1]
User Analyzer Agent
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Figure 2: Maintenance of the User Profile
[2]
Maintenance agent allows the Web site owner to maintain the site database and advertisement database when there are changes. Another agent to maintain these databases is the database detection agent that will detect all changes in the three databases automatically.
[3]
To implement the advertising mechanism, in addition to the above agents and databases, it needs an inference agent and an advertising knowledge base. The inference agent will be responsible for inferring “what,” “when,” and “whom” of an advertising action based on rules in the advertising knowledge base. The advertising knowledge base will consist of all kinds of rules for
[4]
[5]
[6]
Berthon, P. (1996), The World Wide Web as an Advertising Medium: Toward an Understanding of Conversion Efficiency, Journal of Advertising Research 36, 43-54. Deighton, J. (1996), The Future of Interactive Marketing, Harvard Business Review 74, 151-162. Ducoffe, R. H. (1996), Advertising Value and Advertising on the Web, Journal of Advertising Research 36, 21-35. Gogan, J. L. (1996-1997), The Web’s Impact on Selling Techniques: Historical Perspective and Early Observations, International Journal of Electronic Commerce 1, 89-108. Novak, T. P., and Hoffman, D. L. (1997), New Metrics for New Media: Toward the Development of Web Measurement Standards, Project 2000: www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu. Rucker, J., and Polanco, M. J. (1997), Siteseer: Personalized Navigation for the Web, Communications of the ACM 40, 73-75.
