A new mobile Internet search engine-based advertising method and theory

Existing mobile Internet advertisement methods let a search engine-based advertiser charge advertised businesses a fee by enabling a mobile Internet user who searches on the Internet find their existences based on their distances from the user's current location or a location specified by the user. Though these advertised businesses may have a slightly high possibility to attract the user to go to their sites for transactions due to the close distance, they also risk of losing the advertising money if the user does not go. This paper proposes a new search engine-based advertising method for location-based mobile commerce. The key idea is to advertise conditionally, i.e., distributing electronic coupons for a business to mobile Internet users only if the number of users searching this business exceeds a threshold. The search engine advertiser does not charge the business by simply listing the business in the search result; it charges an advertising fee only after it distributes electronic coupons for the business. The theory behind this method shows that the business is guaranteed to make a profit in a statistical sense by setting a proper threshold, in addition to a higher possibility of winning users by issuing electronic coupons