Apple has filed a patent number 20140025620 that would let your Apple gear work out what kind of mood you’re in when it comes to online purchasing. The patent is dubbed “inferring user mood based on user and group characteristic data.” According to the patent, an individual’s responsiveness to targeted content delivery can be affected by a number of factors, such as an interest in the content, other content the user is currently interacting with, the user’s current location, or even the time of day.
Jobs’ Mob reasons that a good way of improving targeted content delivery can be to infer a user’s current mood and then deliver content that is selected.
The technology analyses mood-associated characteristic data collected to produce at a baseline mood profile for a user. The user’s current mood can then be inferred by applying one or more mood rules to compare current mood-associated data to at least one baseline mood profile for the user.
According to Jobs’ Mob: “Targeted content delivery has long been an accepted means of conveying a desired message to an audience. Instead of creating a single message and delivering it to every member of the public, a content provider would prefer to identify a segment of the population that is likely to have the greatest interest in their message." One technique often used to segment a population is to identify individuals whose characteristics satisfy a target demographic for a particular item of targeted content.
However, even though an individual’s overall profile indicates that the individual is likely to be receptive to the targeted content, there are many other factors that can affect an individual’s responsiveness at a particular point in time. For example, if an individual is pre-occupied or unhappy, the individual may not be as receptive to certain types of content.
“While the development of digital content delivery has enabled new techniques for identifying user characteristics, the user characteristics are often focused on a more general understanding of an individual’s interest in targeted content. This can lead to periods of time where the targeted content delivery is misaligned, thereby resulting in decreased satisfaction for both the content provider and the content receiver.”
