U.S. Patent Updates Demonstrate Unique Search Applications

U.S. Patent Updates Demonstrate Unique Search Applications

A series of recent filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show unusual ways to implement search with advertising.

Dish Technologies updated a patent this week that inventors describe as having the ability to provision commercial-free or break-free media content.

U.S. Patent Updates Demonstrate Unique Search Applications | DeviceDaily.com

The content may include advertising, broadcast, social media, news, and more. In a satellite broadcast television implementation, subscribers may have the ability to search for and access commercial-free programming.

The patent application — No. 10,165,338, originally filed in May 2018 — focuses on search for media sources and advertising.

The technology can process data from one or more devices and perform actions such as the ability to generate a list to a display, or matching a keyword to media content. The list identifies one or more breaks for advertisements.

Simplistically, it processes a search string entered through a user interface to identify instances of the media content matched with at least a portion of the search string. Basically, the technology searches for break-free media content from a variety of data sources.

Yet the patent is anything but simplistic. In addition to displaying and matching information, it can distinguish between types of targeted advertising. For example, one type may include a service or package offered by a service provider, as part of a campaign. That service or package may be selected to serve up to the customer based on the content, such as anything to do with martial arts, viewed at the time.

Another patent foiled by Uptown Network in Naples, Florida, describes an interactive method for ordering and marketing wine and other products.

Patent No. 10,127,585 — updated in November 2018 and originally filed in December 2011—details a way to use interactive wine lists and consumer-driven advertising to increase search engine rankings for restaurants and wines through social media websites.

A unique badge promotes the wines on the interactive wine list to increases wine sales from vendors. In addition, tracking allows all user actions and information entered into the interactive wine list to be used for marketing data and for bounce back marketing.

And finally, Uber Technologies updated a patent — No. 10,068,025 — described as supporting “high precision local search,” which really focuses on maps.

A software provider embeds spatial keys into maps, which are then provided to producers of Internet content such as map providers. For example, a homeowner posts a message on a web bulletin board advertising his house for sale and includes a map showing the location of the house.

The search engine’s web crawler encounters a page having a spatial key embedded in an image. The spatial key is indexed with the other content on the page. Since the spatial key identifies a small geographic area, this type of indexing allows search queries to be limited by area and still provide useful results. In this case, the person searching an engine for a “house for sale” in a specific area will be directed to web pages that meet the geographic and content search terms.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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