Abstract: Methods and systems for presenting content such as articles based on utility are provided. In one embodiment, a plurality of articles are determined, each article in the plurality of articles including article content and a corresponding preview icon, the preview icon defining a link to the corresponding article content when presented. For each article in the plurality of articles, a user experience utility value is determined. And for each article in the plurality of articles, an economic utility value is also determined. A ranked order of the articles is determined based upon each article's user experience utility value and economic utility value.

Abstract: The present application provides systems and corresponding methods for creating a delivery allocation plan in a network-based environment. The methods may include receiving and storing advertising contracts and data related to the advertising contracts; constructing a bipartite graph based on the received contract data; annotating each demand node; and receiving impression data and other eligible contract data. Thereafter, the method may include for each impression, calculating a first supply value and for each contract, calculating a first demand value. The first demand value may be used to calculate a second supply value and a delivery allocation may be calculated using the second supply value and the second demand value for each contract.

Abstract: An advertisement impression distribution system includes a data processing system operable to generate an allocation plan for serving advertisement impressions. The allocation plan allocates a first portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy guaranteed demand and a second portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy non-guaranteed demand. The data processing system includes an optimizer, the optimizer to establish a relationship between the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The relationship defines a range of possible proportions of allocation of the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The optimizer generates a solution in accordance with an uncertain supply of advertisement impressions, in which a projected supply of advertisement impressions is determined with a model from the uncertain supply of advertisement impressions.

Abstract: An advertisement impression distribution system includes a data processing system operable to generate an allocation plan for serving advertisement impressions. The allocation plan allocates a first portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy guaranteed demand and a second portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy nonguaranteed demand. The data processing system includes an optimizer configured to establish a relationship between the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The relationship defines a range of proportions of allocation of the first portion and the second portion. The optimizer generates a solution maximizing guaranteed demand fairness, non-guaranteed demand revenue, and click value. The solution identifies a determined proportion of the first portion of advertisement impressions to serve and a determined proportion of the second portion of advertisement impressions to serve.

Abstract: Methods and systems for presenting content such as articles based on utility are provided. In one embodiment, a plurality of articles are determined, each article in the plurality of articles including article content and a corresponding preview icon, the preview icon defining a link to the corresponding article content when presented. For each article in the plurality of articles, a user experience utility value is determined. And for each article in the plurality of articles, an economic utility value is also determined. A ranked order of the articles is determined based upon each article's user experience utility value and economic utility value. And a portion of the preview icons of the articles are presented on a graphical display page in a priority orientation based on the ranked order of the articles.

Abstract: An advertisement impression distribution system includes a data processing system operable to generate an allocation plan for serving advertisement impressions. The allocation plan allocates a first portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy guaranteed demand and a second portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy non-guaranteed demand. The data processing system includes an optimizer, the optimizer to establish a relationship between the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The relationship defines a range of possible proportions of allocation of the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The optimizer generates a solution in accordance with an uncertain supply of advertisement impressions, in which a projected supply of advertisement impressions is determined with a model from the uncertain supply of advertisement impressions.

Abstract: An advertisement impression distribution system includes a data processing system operable to generate an allocation plan for serving advertisement impressions. The allocation plan allocates a first portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy guaranteed demand and a second portion of advertisement impressions to satisfy non-guaranteed demand. The data processing system includes an optimizer, the optimizer to establish a relationship between the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions. The relationship defines a range of possible proportions of allocation of the first portion of advertisement impressions and the second portion of advertisement impressions.

Abstract: A method of balancing advertisement inventory allocation includes constructing a flow network of nodes having impressions connected to contracts through corresponding arcs such as to satisfy demand requests of the contracts; normalizing an impression value of each node to a predetermined cost range; setting a cost of each arc to each corresponding normalized value; iteratively performing a plurality of times: (a) sampling the nodes or the arcs to create sample nodes and arcs, each time starting from a different random seed; (b) optimally allocating impressions from the sample nodes to the contracts with a minimum-cost network flow algorithm; (c) separately allocating impressions from sample arcs of lowest cost before allocating those from sample arcs of higher cost; averaging allocations from iterations (b) to create a first allocation; averaging allocations from iterations (c) to produce a second allocation; and computing a weighted solution of the first and second allocations.

Abstract: A system for advertisement inventory allocation is disclosed, including a database to store advertisement impressions. An indexer builds a plurality of index tables each associated with an attribute that is mapped to a plurality of the impressions. An impression matcher constructs a flow network including a plurality of nodes each containing impressions of at least one corresponding attribute projected to be available during a time period, a plurality of contracts each including specific requests for impressions that satisfy a demand profile during the time period, and a plurality of arcs to connect the plurality of nodes to the plurality of contracts that match the demand profile of each contract.

Abstract: An advertising distribution system mediates and distributes advertising opportunities, especially insertions of ads on web pages, according to advertisers' representative targeting profiles. The number and characteristics of future ad impressions is forecast. A portion is allocated to guaranteed-delivery advertiser contracts and the remainder is offered on a spot market. A division between guaranteed and spot market allocations is sought to maximize revenue, taking into account a value associated with meeting the advertisers' representative profiles. The value of representativeness can be inferred from the marginal revenue of a spot market sale, and optionally weighted. The guaranteed and spot market revenues for all possible efficient allocations produces a curve. An operating point on the curve is determined by selecting a weighting factor or selecting a proportion of total revenue that shall be attributable to representativeness.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for allocating inventory are disclosed. The system may maintain a plurality of inventory pools of impressions that are projected to be available during a time period, each of the plurality of inventory pools having a corresponding set of attributes. The system may receive a plurality of requests from advertisers, each of the plurality of requests requesting a number of impressions during the time period that satisfy a corresponding demand profile, the demand profile having a corresponding set of attributes. The system may allocate impressions in the plurality of inventory pools to the plurality of requests by balancing an interest of a seller of the impressions to maximize value of remaining inventory in the plurality of inventory pools against an interest of the advertisers in allocating a representative sample of impressions in each of the plurality of inventory pools that satisfy the demand profile for each of the plurality of requests.

Abstract: A system (and method) for a recovery of data from a lost sector in a storage system, which includes a set of readable and lost sectors in a plurality of disks in the storage system, includes identifying a lost sector of at least one disk of the storage system, determining whether the data from the lost sector is capable of being recovered, and, if the data from the lost sector is capable of being recovered, generating a recovery formula for the lost sector and recovering the data from the lost sector based on the recovery formula.

Abstract: A modular scoring system using rank aggregation merges search results into an ordered list of results using many different features of documents. The ranking functions of the present system can easily be customized to the needs of a particular corpus or collection of users such as an intranet. Rank aggregation is independent of the underlying score distributions between the different factors, and can be applied to merge any set of ranking functions. Rank aggregation holds the advantage of combining the influence of many different heuristic factors in a robust way to produce high-quality results for queries. The modular scoring system combines factors such as indegree, page ranking, URL length, proximity to the root server of an intranet, etc, to form a single ordering on web pages that closely obeys the individual orderings, but also mediates between the collective wisdom of individual heuristics.

Abstract: A logical directory ranking system ranks documents or web pages utilizing logical directories. From the hierarchical structure represented in a URL string, URLs can often be grouped into “compound documents” that represent a single unit of information. Such compound documents tend to comprise URLs that agree up to a last delimiter such as a forward slash (/). The present system groups together compound documents as a single information node with one or more leaves, constructing a logical directory graph. URLs can be grouped at a level of granularity below an individual directory. For example, the URLs may be grouped together on the basis of hostname, domain, or any level of the hierarchy of the URLs. Edges in the logical directory graph are formed by links between the logical directories. Edges have weights corresponding to the number of links between logical directories. Nodes have weights corresponding to the number of web pages or leaves represented by a node.