Apple has won three patents from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office involving delivery of digital content — and ways to recommend digital content on Apple online stores.

Patent number 20120054302 involves location context for content delivery. The selection of invitational content to deliver to a user can be influenced by the user’s current location. Periodically, the content delivery system prioritizes the invitational content that is eligible for delivery to the user based on information about the user and the user’s interactions with items of invitational content. Upon resolving a location associated with the user’s device, the content delivery system re-prioritizes the invitational content.

The re-prioritization can be based on the user’s assignment to spatial-temporal segments or the user’s proximity to predefined landmarks. An item is then selected from the re-prioritized invitational content and delivered to the user. The inventors are Eswar Priyadarshan, Irfan Mohammed, Dan Maraius Grigorovici and Omar Abdala.

Patent number 20120054004 is for an invitation content recommendation engine. Systems and methods are provided for booking and managing electronic campaigns. In particular, electronic campaigns are booked by obtaining a correlation between campaign input parameters for the campaign, campaign output characteristics for the campaign, and network output characteristics of network elements affected or impacted by the campaign. The correlation can then be used to identify sets of values for the input parameters that result in the various output characteristics meeting some criteria and one of the sets can thereafter be used to book an electronic campaign.

At a later time, if the actual values for the various output parameters fail to meet corresponding criteria, the correlation can be updated to identify and select a new set of campaign input parameter values for the electronic campaign. The inventors are Eswar Priyadarshan, Kenley Sun, Dan Maraius Grigorovici, Ravikiran Chittari, Jayasurya Vadrevu and Jeffery M. Banister.

Patent number 20120054303 is for content delivery based on temporal considerations. Per the patent, invitational content can be served to a user taking into account temporal considerations. By using temporal considerations, such as dayparts having a relationship to the content or the user, the content delivery system can better associate content to users to increase the relevance of the content to the user, to increase the user’s interest in the content, and to increase the performance of the content delivery system as judged by the meeting of system objectives. The inventors are Eswar Priyadarshan, Kenley Sun, Ravikiran Chittari and Jayasurya Vadrevu.