Intermediary service for collection of opt-in contact information

Abstract

A user can visit a website hosted by a web server, sign up with the website, and during signup the user can provide demographic information. That demographic information or a portion thereof can be provided to a promoter server which determines whether that demographic information matches criteria established by third party entities seeking to obtain acceptance of offers from users matching the established criteria. If matching, the promoter server provides an opportunity for the user to accept the matching offer(s). Responsive to receiving an indication of acceptance, the promoter server provides a form to collect information from the user. The information provided by the user in the form can be verified by the promoter server and ultimately provided to the third-party entity responsible for that offer. The promoter server can determine whether the user has already accepted a matching offer and exclude an already accepted offer from being presented again.

1 . Tangible computer readable media storing data for configuring a machine to perform a method for obtaining opt-in contact information from users accessing content from content servers, the method comprising:
 communicating, over a network, by a promoter server with a web server belonging to a web host that is operable to serve a web page to a user device, the web page for display on a display of the user device, and comprising an interface providing an opportunity for a user to register with the web host by entering information in a plurality of data fields in a form provided by the web host to the user device for display;   receiving at least some of the information entered by the user in the form;   accessing a database, stored on a tangible computer readable medium coupled with the promoter server, the database comprising descriptions of offers from a plurality of advertisers, each offer comprising a set of criteria to be matched with received user information, in order for that offer to be presentable to that user as an opt-in opportunity to the user corresponding to the received user information;   comparing the user data from the web server with the respective criteria for the offers to identify matching offers;   identifying and excluding from presentation any matching offer that has already been accepted by the user, using data stored in a tangible computer readable medium correlating user-identifying data elements with offers that were accepted by that user;   providing an opt-in window for display on the display of the user device, responsive to a match between the user data and respective criteria of one or more of the offers, the opt-in window presenting each offer that matches and which has not yet been accepted by the user, with a corresponding interface element, by which the user can provide input to indicate a desire to opt-into that offer; and   providing information about the user to each advertiser whose offer was accepted by the user.   
     
     
         2 . The tangible computer readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises for each offer selected by the user, sending a confirmation e-mail addressed to an e-mail address of the user, the e-mail sent on behalf of an advertiser whose offer was accepted by the user, and verifying the validity of the e-mail address. 
     
     
         3 . The tangible computer readable media of  claim 2 , wherein the providing information about the user to each advertiser is conditioned on verification of the validity of the e-mail address. 
     
     
         4 . The tangible computer readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the data stored in a tangible computer readable medium correlating user-identifying data elements with offers that were accepted by that user comprises a list of users whose information has been sent to the advertisers, and a list of promotions that have been shown to each user. 
     
     
         5 . The tangible computer readable media of  claim 1 , wherein the data stored in a tangible computer readable medium correlating user-identifying data elements with offers that were accepted by that user comprises elements of personal information for each user of a list of users, and an identification of a promotion, attributable to a particular advertiser that was a source of that element of personal information for that user. 
     
     
         6 . The tangible computer readable media of  claim 5 , wherein the method further comprises providing one or more elements of information about a user in the list of users, to an advertiser responsible for an offer that the user opted in to accept, but for which the user did not provide those one or more elements of information, wherein the provided one or more elements were sourced from a promotion by a different advertiser than the advertiser responsible for the offer that the user opted in to accept. 
     
     
         7 . A machine implemented method of electronic opt-in contact information collection, comprising:
 receiving indications from web servers of opportunities to serve offers on devices to which the web servers have respectively served web pages for display on respective displays of the devices, each indication comprising an element of information about a respective user of the device that has been served the web page from that web server;   using each of the elements of user information to determine respective sets of opt-in offers to be presented on each device for display to the user of that device;   receiving opt-in results, indicative of which offer or offers each user has decided to accept;   responsively serving a request to each user, requesting information related to each offer accepted by that user, the requested information specified by respective advertisers responsible for the offers;   receiving a response to the request;   determining whether the response contains all of the requested information; and   for any part of information requested, but not provided, determining whether that information is stored in a tangible machine readable medium in association with identifying information about the user, the stored information originating from previous interactions with the user, and if all the information requested can be provided, either from the user response, or by retrieval from the tangible machine readable medium, providing those items of information to the advertiser responsible for the accepted offer as a completed opt-in for that advertiser off.   
     
     
         8 . The machine implemented method of electronic opt-in contact information collection of  claim 7 , further comprising using e-mail addresses as indexes into the information stored on the tangible machine readable medium, in order to identify which offers were previously accepted by a user associated with each e-mail address. 
     
     
         9 . A machine-implemented method of collecting opt-in contact information on behalf of advertisers, comprising:
 interacting, by a promoter server, with web servers hosting published web content, the interaction between the promoter server and each of the web servers comprising receiving demographic information relating to a user that is accessing published web content from each of the web servers;   during a respective time when each user is accessing the content, determining whether the received demographic information for that user matches required user characteristics for offers available to be presented, which have been provided to the promoter server by third-party entities;   responsive to determining that a particular offer matches the required user characteristics for that offer, determining whether that particular offer has already been accepted by that user, by searching for identifying information for that user in a database tracking which offers have been accepted by which users wherein the offers tracked in the database may have been presented and accepted on any of the Web servers with which the promoter server is capable of interacting;   responsive to determining that the particular offer has not already been accepted by that user, presenting, through the Web server on which that user is accessing content, an indication of the availability of that particular offer for acceptance by that user;   responsive to receiving an indication of acceptance of that particular offer by that user, presenting a form to gather information from that user, the form presented through the web server on which the user is accessing content, the information to be collected specified by the third-party entity responsible for that offer; and   providing the information entered by that user into the form to the third-party entity responsible for that offer.