Online Survey Spawning, Administration And Management

Abstract

A method and apparatus for spawning and management of online surveys is provided. An administration and redirector subsystem (ARS) is used manage ongoing surveys for a plurality of sites. Surveys can be added to or removed from individual sites using the ARS. The ARS also tracks statistics for individual surveys. Redirector tags invite users to participate in surveys and track user survey participation through cookies. The system can be used to conduct advertisement effectiveness studies. Tracker tags and corresponding cookies are used to track users who have viewed content containing the tag. Each study is issued a unique content tag, but uses the same redirector tag.

1 . A method of administering surveys, the method comprising:
 including, in a web page provided by a publisher to a client, a tag that causes cookie information stored at the client to be provided from the client to a redirector in response to the web page being decoded at said client;   wherein the cookie information was placed by tags associated with content items that were sent to the client before the web page was provided to the client;   wherein the cookie information includes an identifier of a first ad campaign, of a plurality of ad campaigns, that is associated with the content items that were sent to the client before the web page was provided to the client;   the redirector using the identifier of the first ad campaign in said cookie information to select one of a plurality of surveys;   wherein a first survey of the plurality of surveys is associated with the first ad campaign and a second survey of the plurality of surveys is associated with a second ad campaign of the plurality of ad campaigns; and   causing an invitation to the selected survey to be displayed;   wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.   
     
     
         2 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of:
 including, in a web page provided by a publisher to a client, a tag that causes cookie information stored at the client to be provided from the client to a redirector in response to the web page being decoded at said client;   wherein the cookie information was placed by tags associated with content items that were sent to the client before the web page was provided to the client;   wherein the cookie information includes an identifier of a first ad campaign, of a plurality of ad campaigns, that is associated with the content items that were sent to the client before the web page was provided to the client;   the redirector using the identifier of the first ad campaign in said cookie information to select one of a plurality of surveys;   wherein a first survey of the plurality of surveys is associated with the first ad campaign and a second survey of the plurality of surveys is associated with a second ad campaign of the plurality of ad campaigns; and   causing an invitation to the selected survey to be displayed.