Apple Researching Automatic Mood Assessment for Targeted Ad Delivery

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today published a new patent application (via AppleInsider) from Apple that describes a method of mood-based advertisement. This method infers the mood of the user by monitoring phone activities, and this mood sentiment information would provide advertisers with a powerful consumer intelligence metric they could use to deliver targeted content.

Rather than ask for mood information directly, Apple's method of mood-based advertising relies on indirect means of inferring a user's feelings. This involves the creation of a baseline mood profile that's derived by monitoring app usage, music playback, social network activity and input from various biometric sensors. Once a profile is established, rules then can be applied to the data and used to gauge the relative mood of the user in relation to this baseline.

A way of improving targeted content delivery can be to select content based, at least in part, on a user's current mood. One way of accomplishing this could be to query the user regarding their current mood prior to selecting an item of invitational content. A targeted content delivery system can then select an item of invitational content based on the user's response. However, such an approach could quickly lead to user aggravation, and likely a majority of users reporting a similar mood. Instead, a targeted content delivery system can be configured to use an inferred or derived mood, which can be generated using the presently disclosed technology.

This mood information can then be used by Apple and other content providers to gauge a user's responsiveness to a product as well as their interest in that product before deciding which ad or offer to send to the user's handset. This mood information also can be used to adjust select settings on the user's handset.

Though Apple is not an advertising company, the company does have an iAd unit that sells advertising space in iOS Apps and iTunes Radio. Since its debut in 2010, iAd has undergone several leadership changes and is now under the control of Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President for Internet Software and Services.