Abstract: An ad serving system accepts a request for one or more ads, determines a set of eligible ads from among ads having a guaranteed serving reservation and ads with uncommitted serving. This may be done using information from the accepted request, wherein the set of eligible ads may include at least one ad having a guaranteed serving reservation and at least one ad with uncommitted serving. A set of ads to serve is determined from the set of eligible ads using an arbitration process, and the determined set of ads is served. Ad serving guarantees may be generated and/or desired ad serving guarantees may be checked using an inventory test and/or a price test.

Abstract: Documents or document sets may be scored to reflect a value of an action, such as a selection for example, when an ad is served with the document (or a document belonging to a document set). A cost associated with the action with respect to an ad that was served with a document may then be adjusted using the score. For example, ad scores may be accepted or determined, and a document may be scored using the ad scores when served with the document and ad scores across a collection of documents to generate a document score. Each of the ad scores may indicate a value of an action with respect to an ad, such as a conversion rate, or a return on investment for an ad selection for example. Document scores used in this way may help advertisers get a more consistent cost per conversion, or return on investment, without requiring them to enter and manage various offers for various documents and/or various ad serving systems having various conversion rates or returns on investment.

Abstract: Documents or document sets may be scored to reflect a value of an action, such as a selection for example, when an ad is served with the document (or a document belonging to a document set). A cost associated with the action with respect to an ad that was served with a document may then be adjusted using the score. For example, ad scores may be accepted or determined, and a document may be scored using the ad scores when served with the document and ad scores across a collection of documents to generate a document score. Each of the ad scores may indicate a value of an action with respect to an ad, such as a conversion rate, or a return on investment for an ad selection for example. Document scores used in this way may help advertisers get a more consistent cost per conversion, or return on investment, without requiring them to enter and manage various offers for various documents and/or various ad serving systems having various conversion rates or returns on investment.

Abstract: Documents or document sets may be scored to reflect a value of an action, such as a selection for example, when an ad is served with the document (or a document belonging to a document set). A cost associated with the action with respect to an ad that was served with a document may then be adjusted using the score. For example, ad scores may be accepted or determined, and a document may be scored using the ad scores when served with the document and ad scores across a collection of documents to generate a document score. Each of the ad scores may indicate a value of an action with respect to an ad, such as a conversion rate, or a return on investment for an ad selection for example. Document scores used in this way may help advertisers get a more consistent cost per conversion, or return on investment, without requiring them to enter and manage various offers for various documents and/or various ad serving systems having various conversion rates or returns on investment.

Abstract: Instead of accepting competing ads and using an arbitration function (e.g., an auction) to choose winning ads to be served with a document, sets of ads (perhaps having different characteristics) can be generated, and an arbitration function can be used to select the winning set of ads. Such arbitrations on sets of ads can consider how ads, search results, colors, positions, fonts, etc., all interact with each other and affect the usefulness of the sets of ads to advertisers, end users, document publishers, and/or an ad serving entity.

Abstract: Documents or document sets may be scored to reflect a value of an action, such as a selection for example, when an ad is served with the document (or a document belonging to a document set). A cost associated with the action with respect to an ad that was served with a document may then be adjusted using the score. For example, ad scores may be accepted or determined, and a document may be scored using the ad scores when served with the document and ad scores across a collection of documents to generate a document score. Each of the ad scores may indicate a value of an action with respect to an ad, such as a conversion rate, or a return on investment for an ad selection for example. Document scores used in this way may help advertisers get a more consistent cost per conversion, or return on investment, without requiring them to enter and manage various offers for various documents and/or various ad serving systems having various conversion rates or returns on investment.

Abstract: The serving of ads of different ad types, such as text ads and image ads, competing to be rendered on an ad area of a document may be arbitrated by (a) determining candidate ads to serve in response to an ad request, wherein the candidate ads include at least one ad of a first ad type and at least one ad of a second ad type, (b) determining a score of each of at least some of the candidate ads, (c) comparing alternative sets of the at least some of the candidate ads to select a set that best meets at least one policy goal, and (d) serving the selected set of candidate ads. Performance parameter values of ads of one type, such as image ads for example, may be estimated from performance parameter values of ads of a second type, such as text ads for example.