Abstract: An automated exchange system is provided which includes a smart electronic double auction for allocating audience items among perspective buyers and sellers and for calculating a set of prices for the audience items, i.e. any form of advertising time and/or space in any media environment, based on buyer bids and seller offers. The system and method includes processing bids and offers, identifying a set of trades in audience items between buyers and sellers which optimize gains obtained by buyers and sellers from the set of trades in the audience items and calculating a price for each item. The system and method effectively processes participants' complex preferences for multiple, heterogeneous, multi-dimensional audience items while providing substantial efficiency advantages, such as reduced transaction costs.