Abstract: A user utility function is implemented in allocating advertisement space to one or more potential advertisers. The user utility function allows advertisement space to be allocated based upon, among other things, the expected utility or usefulness that a proposed advertisement will have to a user. The user utility function, for example, compares proposed advertisements to historical user actions to generate respective user utility values for advertisements (e.g., based upon user responses to advertisements for particular types of product, responses to advertisements from particular types of sellers, etc.). The user utility values can then be applied to bids submitted by advertisers for advertisement space for particular advertisements to obtain modified bids. The modified bids thus reflect, among other things, the expected utility of an advertisement to a user, and thus allow an advertisement host to allocate advertisement space accordingly.

Abstract: A publisher union comprises a plurality of publishers, a channel, and a publisher union administrator. The publisher union is administered by receiving a channel proposal, determining whether the channel proposal is acceptable, forming a channel, and presenting the channel for monetization. User information is gathered by the publisher union by establishing a domain, collecting user information, aggregating the user information, and providing the aggregated user information to publisher union members.

Abstract: A system to facilitate trading of advertising comprises a publisher broker representing at least one publisher and to determine an ask for an advertisement space on the publisher's webpage, an advertiser broker representing at least one advertiser and to manage an advertiser's bid for the advertisement space, and an exchange to facilitate a transaction for the advertisement space between the publisher broker and the advertiser broker. A method of facilitating trading of advertising comprises receiving an ask from a publisher broker for advertisement space on a webpage, receiving a bid from an advertiser broker for the advertisement space, and pairing the ask with the bid. A method for enriching user information comprises aggregating user information about a user, storing the aggregate user information according to a user identifier, receiving the user identifier from an exchange, and sending the aggregate user information to the exchange.

Abstract: Methods and systems in search marketing which permit advertisers to provide advertisements to a search engine, as well as bids associated with the advertisements themselves, are provided. Advertisements are selected for presentation when they are determined to be relevant and payment for presentation is due only upon the conditions of the bid being met. If desired, advertisers may be permitted to provide, in addition to an advertisement, one or more destination pages associated with selection of the advertisement. In this case, relevance can be determined not only on the basis of the content of the advertisement itself, but also on the content of the destination page(s).

Abstract: The user interfaces, methods and systems described herein facilitate user interaction with an ad space by conveying additional advertising content via a preview pane and facilitate automatically generating the content of the preview pane. By way of example, an electronic advertisement is conveyed to a user in an ad space provided by a third party, and a secondary advertisement generating component automatically generates at least part of the content of a secondary advertisement. The secondary advertisement provides content associated with the electronic advertisement and occurs upon receiving a user indication. A context acquiring component also may provide context information to the secondary advertisement generating component to automatically generate at least part of the content of the secondary advertisement. By way of another example, a user is provided with one or more ads from a plurality of different advertisers in a first ad space maintained by an ad space supplier.