An interesting patent application published this week shows a landline phone capable of displaying contextual adverts to users based on a number of parameters.

The patent document, discovered by ZDNet, shows how the Internet Protocol Phone System would be able to display Google Ads as well as other HTML and image adverts downloaded from the internet.

Russell Shaw, ZDNet writer, notes that the device would geotarget adverts depending on user location: “Since the GUIs are downloaded from a server connected to the internet, the pages displayed on the display screen can be varied according to personal preference or according to temporal and/or geographical criteria, e.g. advertisements can be sent depending on the time or day, month or year to telephones depending on their location (houses, apartments, hotels).”

Imagine if your landline phone was subsidised by Google (or a similar advertising company) in return for you viewing targeted adverts based on the people you call and your location? Nobody minds the ads at the side of Gmail and most users would be happy seeing discreet ads on a screen on their landline phone in return for cheaper phone bills.

Landline phone that could show contextual Google Ads

With reference to FIG. 3, the present invention can also be used in a system that provides interactive advertisements via the internet to the display screen 16 of each telephone 1.

Various advertisers will store their advertisements on one or more centralized servers 31 for transmission to the telephones 1 of end users, wherein the players will interpret the advertisement page and display it on the display screen 16.

The transmitted advertisements can be determined based on the geographical location of the telephones and on temporal criteria. For example, in a urban or suburban community advertisements relating to fast food restaurants will be transmitted in the late afternoon and early evening, while grocery store advertisements will be transmitted in the early morning.

Real estate advertisements can be sent to telephones in apartment buildings 32 or town homes 33, while hardware or home improvement store advertisements will be transmitted only to single family homes 34 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. High end automobile advertisements could be sent to homes 36 on certain streets or areas in which real estate prices are known to be high.

The present invention is particularly suited for use in hotels and hotel chains, in which the advertisements can be tailored to time of day and to specific rooms or groups of rooms, e.g. advertisements for breakfast specials in the hotel restaurant and for local attractions in the morning, advertisements for local fast food restaurants at lunch, and advertisements for local entertainment in the afternoon and evening.
In addition, the processor 12 can be programmed to email a designated person whenever a phone call is initiated or received by a given telephone 1. Moreover, phone messages left in the processor’s memory can also be saved on the server 14 and/or forwarded by e-mail to a designated person, e.g. in MP3 format.

A family’s weekly grocery list can be saved in the memory and displayed on the display screen 16 to enable additions, either by manual entry or by identifying the additional items from a list. The list can then be sent via e-mail, telephone, fax or the internet to a grocery store, where the order would be prepared for pick-up or delivery.