Abstract: A technique identifies regions of an image characterized by constant pixel intensity in a resource-efficient, latency-efficient, and scalable manner. The technique involves: obtaining a candidate image; determining whether the candidate image contains a contiguous region of pixels having intensity values within a specified range of intensity values; assessing whether the contiguous region satisfies a prescribed test; and selecting or excluding the candidate image for further processing based on a result of the assessing. The operation of determining involve two phases. First, the technique determines a distribution of intensity values within the candidate image. Second, the technique leverages the distribution to search the candidate image for neighboring pixels having intensity values within the specified range of intensity values, beginning from a selected starting pixel in a qualifying subset of pixels.

Abstract: A system is disclosed for selecting bid terms for search advertising. A bid term selection tool includes a processor to execute an algorithm to provide suggested bid terms. The algorithm includes a cosine similarity function, a modified cosine similarity function, a penalty factor function, and an expected revenue function. The bid term selection tool aggregates the function of the algorithm for potential bid terms and compares the totals for the potential bid terms to select a relevant bid term.