Abstract: A system and method for creating and serving image-based contextual advertising through programmatically composed image collages, including the procurement, indexing and matching of query images, the procurement, indexing and matching of web images and the transferring of indexed and matched data from those web images to the query images, the procurement, indexing and matching of product images to be used as collage ad components, the matching and selection of one or more decorative template elements and one or more structural templates, the programmatic combining of the product images and the templates and template elements into a collage and the distribution of this collage for display to a user as a collage ad, based at least in part on the visual data extracted and indexed from the query image.