TIC: CUSTOMIZATION OF ELECTRONIC CONTENT BASED ON USER SIDE INTERPRETATION OF ONLINE REPORTS, WITH HIERARCHICAL MODELS OF CONSUMER ATTRIBUTES FOR TARGETING CONTENT IN A PRIVACY-PRESERVING MANNER

摘要

A system and method provide for theinterpretation and augmenting of structureddocuments electronically delivered to an in-dividual consumer's computer using con-sumer profiles developed from and main-tained with information reflecting the con-sumer's online and offline transactions, byselecting the variable content alternatives en-coded in the structured documents that mostclosely match the consumer's profile. Theconsumer profiles are logically controlledby the consumer's computer, thus provid-ing for enhanced security over informationthat is personal and confidential to the con-sumer, yet still allowing third parties suchas web sites and others electronically deliv-ering structured documents to the consumerto have such documents customized based onthe consumer's profile. The consumer profileincludes hierarchical attribute vectors whichencode attributes of a consumer at progres-sively higher levels of abstraction, and al-lowing for querying of any combination ofabstracted data or abstracted attributes of aconsumer. The consumer profiles are up-dated with a process that reflects the relevance of each transaction to the consumer's profile, and accommodates a decay in the influence oftransactions over time. A selection process for selecting content allows for multiple items of content to be selected for sequenced display tothe consumer, through a limited presentation space. Additionally, financial documents are arranged for display in a manner which facilitatesthe inclusion or promotional information into individual transaction lines, so as to take advantage of the consumer's visual scanning of thestatement.