Abstract: For a multi-party online advertising exchange including advertising and publishing entities and one or more third party participants, the disclosed systems and methods enable third party participation in arbitrage opportunities in online advertising transactions. A plurality of underlying transaction details are abstracted and provided to the third party participants without loss of generalization and while preserving relationships in the transaction data, to enable a third party share risk in advertising transactions. Various system refinements are provided and disclosed according to a host of optional embodiments.

Abstract: For a multi-party advertising exchange, including publishing entities and advertising entities from disparate advertising networks, which facilitates transactions for publishing inventory, a value add broker is provided to aggregate information from third parties having valuable information for input to the exchange or to perform services that are valuable to transactions in the exchange. The valuable information or services further facilitate the transactions for the publishing inventory automatically generating a benefit for the third parties providing the valuable information or services commensurate with the value added to the transactions.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method for displaying advertisements to members of a network comprises identifying one or more communities of members, identifying one or more influencers in the one or more communities, and placing one or more advertisements at the profiles of one or more members in the identified one or more communities.

Abstract: A user with a cell phone interacts, in a personalized session, with an electronic sign system. In some embodiments, the user's location relative to the sign is discerned from camera imagery—either imagery captured by the cell phone (i.e., of the sign), or captured by the sign system (i.e., of the user). Demographic information about the user can be estimated from imagery captured acquired by the sign system, or can be accessed from stored profile data associated with the user. The sign system can transmit payoffs (e.g., digital coupons or other response data) to viewers—customized per user demographics. In some arrangements, the payoff data is represented by digital watermark data encoded in the signage content. The encoding can take into account the user's location relative to the sign—allowing geometrical targeting of different payoffs to differently-located viewers. Other embodiments allow a user to engage an electronic sign system for interactive game play, using the cell phone as a controller.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes accessing online advertising data including metric values for one or more online advertising spaces; identifying pairs of the user variables; for each of the pairs, calculating a statistical score for each of the online advertising metrics and calculating a weighted score based on all the statistical scores for the pair; selecting one of the pairs based on its weighted score; and performing a merge test on the selected pair; and merging the user variables in the selected one of the pairs with each other if the selected one of the pairs passes the merge test.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes accessing metric values for one or more online advertising spaces for placing one or more online advertisements; generating a first user variable subgroup and a second user variable subgroup from a user variable group; deriving first metric values for the first user variable subgroup; deriving second metric values for the second user variable subgroup; for each of the online advertising metrics, using a particular statistical model to calculate a statistical score based on the first and second metric values with respect to the online advertising metric and the first and second user variable subgroups; performing a split test on the first user variable subgroup and the second user variable subgroup; and splitting the user variable group into two separate user variable groups if the first and second variable subgroups pass the split test.

Abstract: A method and system for generating advertisement sets for keywords automatically extracted from data feeds is provided. An advertisement system receives various data feeds. The advertisement system may on a periodic or an ad hoc basis request a feed server to provide the latest feed having feed items. Each feed item may include a title, a description, and a link to an associated web site. To generate an advertisement set, which includes an advertisement, a keyword, and a link to a landing page, the advertisement system extracts a keyword from a feed item, identifies a category for advertising using the extracted keyword, generates an advertisement (or “creative”) for advertising that category, and generates a landing page link associated with the category. The advertisement system then submits the advertisement set to an advertisement placement service for placement along with content that is somehow related to the keyword.

Abstract: A device receives, from a user device, a request for qualified offers for a particular customer, and retrieves, based on the request, profile information associated with the particular customer. The device generates a call to a backend database based on the profile information, and receives, from the backend database, offer qualification indicators based on the call. The device determines qualified offers based on the offer qualification indicators, and provides the qualified offers to the user device for display.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for dynamically ordering advertisements received from at least one advertisement supplier. In one embodiment, a method includes sending a request to at least a first advertisement supplier; receiving one or more advertisements from the at least first advertisement supplier; identifying a prioritizing parameter associated with each of the one or more advertisements; and dynamically ordering the one or more advertisements from the at least first advertisement supplier into two or more positions of a response based on the prioritizing parameter.

Abstract: A system and method for selecting targeted information (e.g., advertisements) for serving with map views. The information is associated with target geographical areas (e.g., cities, metropolises, regions, countries) identified by the information providers. A given message or other set of information may be served with map views that significantly intersect the message's target area. A target area significantly intersects a map view if it overlaps the map view by at least a threshold percentage of the map view (e.g., 25%). Messages' target areas may first be compared with a map view to identify those that significantly intersect. Then, the messages whose target areas significantly intersect the map view may be filtered or screened based on any search terms or key words received with a request for the map view.

Abstract: A system for updating advertisement bids including a query engine and an advertisement selection engine. The query engine provides an advertisement query to the advertisement selection engine. The advertisement selection engine includes a query processing module that retrieves advertisements associated with the advertisement query based on bids. The bid update module generates a suggested bid for an advertiser. The bid update module may be configured to automatically update the current bid for an advertisement based on the suggested bid. Further, the bid update module may be configured to determine the suggested bid by calculating a maximum profit position for the advertisement and projecting an envy free point for the maximum profit position.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for increasing user response to advertisements from advertisement suppliers obtained in response to keywords. In one embodiment, a method includes identifying a base request from an advertisement requester; identifying a first and second keyword associated with the base request, the first and second keyword having both previously been used in advertisement requests to a first advertisement supplier; ranking the first keyword and the second keyword based on a user response history for each of the first keyword and second keyword; and identifying the higher ranked of the first keyword and the second keyword to be used to dynamically alter the base request to form an altered request to be sent to the first advertisement supplier.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for increasing user response to advertisements. Methods include identifying a base request from an advertisement requester, identifying a first keyword and a second keyword associated with the base request, ranking the first keyword and the second keyword based on a user response history associated with the first keyword and the second keyword, and identifying the higher ranked of the first keyword and the second keyword to be used to dynamically alter the base request.