Systems and methods for allocating electronic advertising opportunities

Abstract

A system, apparatus, and method are presented for allocating for allocating advertisements for display are provided that include collecting a plurality of advertising spaces, each advertising space having at least one associated advertising space variable; collecting a media inventory, the media inventory comprising a plurality of advertisements, each advertisement having at least one associated advertisement variable; receiving a bid price and a target inventory percentage for each advertisement: receiving a request for an advertisement to be placed at a specified advertising space; identifying advertisements in the media inventory that are qualified to receive an impression at the specified advertising space; creating a qualified advertisement ranking by sorting the qualified advertisements by bid price; selecting advertisements from the qualified advertisement ranking until the sum of target inventory percentages of selected advertisements is equal to or greater than 100 percent; and allocating advertising impressions to the selected advertisements.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This application relates generally to advertising. Principles consistent with embodiments of the present invention relate to facilitating the interaction of parties engaged in electronic market transactions, and more specifically, to allocating electronic advertising opportunities to a plurality of advertisers in an economically efficient manner.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Since the early 1990's, the number of people using the World Wide Web has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the World Wide Web, they generate higher volumes of traffic over the Internet. As the benefits of commercializing the Internet can be tremendous, businesses increasingly take advantage of this traffic by advertising their products or services on-line. These advertisements may appear in the form of leased advertising space (e.g., “banners”) on websites or as advertisements presented to digital television users, which are comparable to rented billboard space in highways and cities or commercials broadcasted during television or radio programs.

Before users browse to a particular web page, there is much unknown to potential advertisers that may place advertisements on that page. For instance, advertisers do not know how many users will browse to particular web pages, and therefore do not know the volume of advertisements (the number of “impressions”) they will be able to place. Further, they do not know how many users will select or “click” on each advertisement, how many sales or other types of “conversions” will result from each display or impression of an advertisement, or what the ratio of clicks to conversions may be.

A problem for a facilitator of electronic advertising is choosing how to allocate an inventory of advertising spaces among a plurality of available advertisements. Advertisers, which supply advertising content, may benefit from impressions (e.g., to increase awareness of a brand), clicks (e.g., to provide additional information about a product), or conversions (e.g., to make sales or sign up new users for services, etc.). Advertisers may pay, on the other hand, per impression, per click, or per conversion, regardless of whether or not the item they are paying for (e.g., impressions, clicks, etc.) is the item that benefits them. Therefore, a facilitator of electronic advertising wishes to allocate advertisements among the inventory of advertising space in a way that maximizes the facilitator's profit.

One approach to allocating advertisements utilizes a system similar to a sealed-bid second-price auction, whereby a bid for a particular advertising space is associated with each qualified advertisement. In such an auction, the advertisement with the highest bid wins the space, but the price paid for the advertising space is equal to the second-highest bid, rather than the winning bid.

One limitation of a sealed-bid second-price auction as applied to electronic advertising is that it assumes that each advertiser makes a separate bid for each single advertising space. However, in many electronic advertising contexts, such a model is not practical because, e.g., the volume of impressions is very high, and an advertiser may wish to only purchase a portion of the available impressions or advertising space inventory that match the advertiser's desired variables.

It is accordingly an object of the invention to overcome the shortcomings of current advertising space inventory allocation techniques.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the invention, systems, apparatuses, and methods for allocating advertisements for display are provided that include collecting a plurality of advertising spaces, each advertising space having at least one associated advertising space variable; collecting a media inventory, the media inventory comprising a plurality of advertisements, each advertisement having at least one associated advertisement variable; receiving a bid price and a target inventory percentage for each advertisement: receiving a request for an advertisement to be placed at a specified advertising space; identifying advertisements in the media inventory that are qualified to receive an impression at the specified advertising space; creating a qualified advertisement ranking by sorting the qualified advertisements by bid price; selecting advertisements from the qualified advertisement ranking until the sum of target inventory percentages of selected advertisements is equal to or greater than 100 percent; and allocating advertising impressions to the selected advertisements.

In some embodiments systems may further comprise allocating advertisements for display comprising: a component configured to collect a plurality of advertising spaces, each advertising space having at least one associated advertising space variable; for a component configured to collect a media inventory, the media inventory comprising a plurality of advertisements, each advertisement having at least one associated advertisement variable; a component configured to receive a bid price and a target inventory percentage for each advertisement; a component configured to receive a request for an advertisement to be placed at a specified advertising space in the advertising inventory; a component configured to identify all advertisements in the media inventory that are qualified to receive an impression at the specified advertising space; a component configured to create a qualified advertisement ranking by sorting the qualified advertisements in descending order by bid price; a component configured to select advertisements from the qualified advertisement ranking until the sum of target inventory percentages of selected advertisements is equal to or greater than 100 percent; and a component configured to allocate an advertising impression to the selected advertisement.

In some embodiments method, systems, and apparatuses for allocating advertisements for display may include a publisher interface for receiving a plurality of advertising spaces from a plurality of publishers of online content, each advertising space having at least one associated advertising space variable; an advertiser interface for receiving a media inventory, comprising advertisements from a plurality of advertisers, each advertisement having at least one associated advertisement variable; and an exchange for: determining a bid price and a target inventory percentage for each advertisement in the media inventory; receiving a request for an advertisement to be placed at a specified advertising space; identifying qualified advertisements based on variables associated with the plurality of advertisements and the plurality of advertising spaces; creating a qualified advertisement ranking by sorting the qualified advertisements in descending order by bid price; selecting advertisements from the beginning of the qualified advertisement ranking until the sum of target inventory percentages of selected advertisements is equal to or greater than 100 percent; and allocating an advertising impression to the selected advertisement.

In some embodiments, systems, apparatuses, and methods may further comprise creating a qualified advertisement ranking by sorting qualified advertisements in descending order by bid price, wherein a qualified advertisement is an advertisement whose at least one advertisement variable matches the at least one advertising space variable of the specified advertising space; and selecting advertisements from the top of the qualified advertisement ranking until the sum of the target inventory percentages of all selected advertisements is equal to or greater than 100%.

In some embodiments, systems, apparatuses, and methods may further comprise collecting advertising data related to a performance of the plurality of advertisements, the plurality of advertising spaces, at least one advertiser, and at least one publisher; and calculating the bid price based on the at least one advertising space variable associated with the specified advertising space, the at least one advertisement variable associated with each advertisement, and the advertising data.

Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The features and advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.

It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain principles of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention. In the drawings:

FIG. 1a is a block diagram of an advertising exchange system consistent with embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 1b is a flowchart of an advertising exchange system consistent with embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a system for allocating electronic advertising opportunities consistent with embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an exemplary bid table showing a ranking of advertisement bid data consistent with embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system used to implement the present invention, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

Reference will now be made in detail to exemplary embodiments of the invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to refer to the same or like parts.

FIG. 1a is a block diagram of an advertising exchange system consistent with embodiments of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1a, system 100 may include advertiser 101, campaign optimization service 103, exchange 105, and publisher 106. An advertiser 101 creates one or more advertisements, such as a webpage banner advertisement or a slogan, to be presented on advertising spaces, such as webpages or displays of personal digital assistants. A publisher 106 may control (e.g., own or manage) an inventory of many advertising spaces on which advertisements may be placed. A publisher 106 may be, e.g. a website or a particular web page, or any entity that controls an electronic advertising space. Campaign optimization service 103 may be a software program and/or a computer server for formulating a bidding strategy for each advertising campaign of advertiser 101 and continually communicating bid information to exchange 105. Exchange 105 may be a software program and/or a computer server for continually receiving bid information from campaign optimization service 103, continually receiving requests to supply a publisher 106 with advertisement bids, and continually submitting winning advertising bids to publisher 106. In some embodiments, the functions of campaign optimization service 103 and exchange 105 may be performed by the same software program or computer server. In other embodiments, publisher 106 may function as campaign optimization service 103 and exchange 105. The operation of these components is described in greater detail below in reference to FIG. 1b.

FIG. 1b is a flowchart of an advertising exchange system consistent with embodiments of the present invention. At step 110, advertiser 101 communicates a campaign goal for at least one advertising campaign to a campaign optimization service 103. A campaign goal may define its associated advertising campaign by setting one or more advertiser-specified target variables for the associated advertising campaign. An advertising campaign, then, may be thought of as a set of user-specified campaign goals related to a particular advertisement or set of advertisements. Target variables may be any combination of, e.g., advertising publication, publication type, connection speed, browser type, geographic region of the connection's IP address, industry, seasonal or other calendar or time restraints, or any other distinguishing feature. Target variables may also include leadback variables. Leadback variables may be associated with a user action and typically occur in two types of situations. The first type of situation occurs when a user has previously accessed, or clicked on an advertisement. The second type of situation occurs when a user has previously visited a certain advertising space, for example, a webpage and may be determined when the user has visited an advertising space a given number of times within a time period. Additionally, target variables may be based on the frequency a user observes advertisements within a time period. For example, advertisements may be limited such that a user will only observe an advertisement twice or three times a day. Target variables may also be based on type of content of an advertising space, or demographic information, such as gender, age, income. Such variables may belong to advertising spaces, advertisements, advertisers, publishers, ends users, and/or other parties. In some embodiments, variables may be conceptually further divided into profile variables, which describe information associated with an end user such as geography and demographics, and contextual variables, which describe the context in which an advertiser, publisher, or third party appears.

At step 115, campaign optimization service 103 formulates a bidding strategy for each advertising campaign of advertiser 101 by creating bids to be submitted to an exchange 105. A bid may combine advertiser-specified target variables with optimization target variables designed to maximize efficiency and profitability of the advertising exchange service. For example, a bid may consist of a description of target variables desired, a maximum price advertiser 101 is willing to pay for each advertisement displayed in an advertising space, and the maximum request volume advertiser 101 is willing to buy for the bid. In some embodiments, the maximum request volume may be a percentage of all available advertising spaces matching the bid variables. In other embodiments, the maximum request volume may be represented differently, e.g., as a total number of advertising requests in a specified period of time. At step 120, campaign optimization service 103 submits bids to exchange 105. In certain embodiments, the bids may be submitted continuously.

At step 125, exchange 105 continually receives advertising requests from a publisher 106. In certain embodiments, the requests are received continuously. An advertising request may specify a particular advertising space or a group of advertising spaces available to be matched with an advertisement or advertisements. At step 130, exchange 105 matches bids from campaign optimization service 103 with advertising requests from publisher 106 based on target variables found in the bids and the actual variables associated with advertising requests. At step 135, exchange 105 sends winning bids to publisher 106. In some embodiments, step 135 may include the publisher communicating information about the advertisement associated with a winning bid. Publisher 106 may then retrieve the selected advertisement from its own server or another location. In other embodiments, step 135 may include sending the winning advertisements themselves to publisher 106. In some embodiments, advertiser 101 may manage some or all of its own bids and communicate directly with exchange 105 and/or publisher 106 with respect to bids for one or more of its advertising campaigns. In some embodiments, exchange 105 may utilize an allocation system similar to the one described below with respect to FIG. 2. In other embodiments, exchange 105 may use any algorithm suitable for selecting one or more winning advertisements from a plurality of advertisement bids for a plurality of requests to fill advertising spaces.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a system for allocating electronic advertising opportunities consistent with embodiments of the present invention. At step 201, an advertising system collects an inventory of advertising spaces and associated variables. In order to facilitate allocating advertisements among advertising spaces, it is necessary to collect information about the inventory based on observable variables. For example, variables may be any combination of advertising publication, publication type, connection speed, browser type, geographic region of the connection's IP address, industry, seasonal or other calendar or time restraints, or any other distinguishing feature. Such variables may be attributes of advertising spaces, advertisements, advertisers, publishers, end users, and/or other parties.

In some embodiments, variables may be conceptually further divided into profile variables, which describe information associated with an end user such as geography and demographics, and contextual variables, which describe the context in which an end user, advertiser, publisher, or third party may appear. An example of a contextual variable is a particular web site or web page. In some embodiments, variables may be further categorized as public variables, which are available to all parties and users of the system, and private variables, to which access may be restricted.

In some embodiments, some variables may be “owned” by advertisers, publishers, end users, an advertising network, or other parties. Ownership of a variable means that a variable's owner or owners may access or utilize a particular type of variable information. In some embodiments, targeting based on private variables can be restricted to those who have paid for the privilege of accessing those variables. As an example, variables provided by a browser are likely to be public variables. However, a cookie placed by an advertiser that labels a particular end user may be a private variable because only the advertiser that placed the cookie or a party that has permission from that advertiser may read and target variables saved in the cookie. In some embodiments, advertisers, publishers, end users, or other parties may choose whether to make variables they own public or private. In some embodiments, private variables may always be read by the exchange system.

In some embodiments, variables may be represented by one or more hierarchies. For example, a zip code, which belongs to a county, which belongs to a state, etc; and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, which describe advertisers or other commercial companies based on categories.

The lifespan of variables may vary greatly. For example, geographic and SIC codes are likely to exist and be relevant for many years into the future, while other variables may be relevant for only a very short time (e.g., a variable indicating a short-term promotion). As the number of variables in the system may conceivably become very high, in some embodiments long-term variables and short-term variables may be treated differently.

Referring again to FIG. 2, at step 202 the advertising system collects advertisements from advertisers. These advertisements may have associated target variables, as described above. As discussed above, an advertiser may target a variable only if the variable is public or if the advertiser has permission to access that variable. In some embodiments, advertisers may submit different combinations of variables with the same advertisement, and the system may treat each advertisement/variable combination as a discrete advertisement.

At step 203, a bid price and a target inventory percentage may be determined for each submitted advertisement based on the advertisement's associated target variables. The bid price may be the maximum price the advertiser of a particular advertisement is willing to pay for each advertising request. The target inventory percentage may be the maximum percentage of inventory that matches the variables that the advertiser is willing to purchase. In some embodiments, for an advertisement in inventory to be considered to match a set of variables, the advertisement must match all target variables. In other embodiments, an advertisement may be considered a match if it matches a single target variable or a defined percentage of target variables.

In some embodiments, the bid price and/or target inventory percentage may be determined by the advertising system and/or campaign optimization service 103 as described above. In some embodiments, the bid price and/or target inventory percentage may be calculated using algorithms that utilize data collected by the system about the success and value of previous advertising campaigns and advertisements.

In other embodiments, the advertiser may submit the bid price and/or target inventory percentage for a particular advertisement, thus reducing or eliminating the necessity for the system to calculate those numbers at step 203.

At step 204, the system receives a request from a publisher for an advertisement to fill a specified advertising space. In order to fill the request, at step 205, the system identifies all qualified advertisements, e.g., those advertisements whose target variables match the variables of the specified advertising space. The system then generates a bid table listing all qualified advertisements, ranked in descending order according to bid price.

An example of such a bid table according to embodiments of the present invention is shown in FIG. 3. The bid table may have three columns: advertisement ID, bid price, and target inventory percentage. The advertisement ID may be an identifier used to uniquely identify each advertisement available in the system. The bid price and target inventory percentage columns may represent the concepts described above. In other embodiments, the bid table may incorporate other variables and/or qualified advertisements may be ranked according to variables other than bid price.

Referring again to FIG. 2, in some embodiments, advertisements are selected from the top of the bid table at step 206 one-by-one until the sum of the target inventory percentages of the selected advertisement is equal to or greater than 100%. In some embodiments, if two or more advertisements have the same bid price and the addition of any one of such advertisements would cause the sum target inventory percentage of selected advertisements to be greater than or equal to 100%, all such advertisements become selected advertisements.

In some embodiments, impressions for the specified advertising space are then allocated at step 207. In certain embodiments, advertisements may be allocated randomly among selected advertisements without regard to the target inventory percentage for each advertisement. In other embodiments, impressions for the specified advertising space are allocated in proportion to the target inventory percentage for each selected advertisement, with the last-selected advertisement receiving only the percentage required for the total sum of inventory percentages of selected advertisements to equal 100%.

In some embodiments, all selected advertisements pay the same price per impression. This price is called the clearing price. In some embodiments, the clearing price is defined as (1) the price of the bid that makes the sum of the percentages go from less than 100% to greater than 100%, or (2) if the sum of the exactly 100%, the highest price of the bids that did not get selected. In other embodiments, the clearing price may be determined in a different manner. In other embodiments, for each impression, the advertiser may be charged at the maximum bid price for the selected advertisement, meaning that the cost of placing an advertisement in the same advertising space may differ by each impression according to the advertisement being displayed.

In some embodiments, the ordering of advertisements according to bid price or any other variable may be carried out continuously or at any time during the process of FIG. 2, for example, before a request is received from a publisher in step 204.

In some embodiments, further controls may be implemented that may affect the allocation of impressions among selected advertisements. Variables of advertisers or advertising spaces may limit advertisements based on a nearly infinite variety of categories. For example, a publisher may limit the percentage of impressions that may be filled by a single advertiser or a single advertisement. Such a limit may be implemented, for example, by publisher, by advertising space, by web page, and/or by a time period, among other variables.

In some embodiments, the advertiser may be given the option to reject unwanted inventory won by the advertiser at auction. For each advertisement, an advertiser may specify an actual interest percentage in addition to the target inventory percentage. In the case of an advertiser winning an auction, an option percentage may be defined as the difference between the target inventory percentage and the actual interest percentage. The advertiser would then have the option to reject all or a portion of the option percentage, which would then be allocated by the system amongst the remaining selected advertisements.

FIG. 3 shows an exemplary bid table showing a ranking of advertisement bid data consistent with embodiments of the present invention. This exemplary bid table includes three columns: Advertisement ID (ID_x), Bid Price (b_x), and Target Inventory Percentage (p_x). In certain embodiments, all qualified advertisements may be sorted and placed into a bid table in decreasing order according to the bid price b_x. Advertisement ID ID_x is a unique identifier assigned to each available advertisement. Target Inventory p_x may be a maximum percentage the owner of advertisement ID_x is willing to buy of advertising positions whose variables match the target variables of advertisement ID_x.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system that may be used to implement the present invention, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 4, according to one or more embodiments, system 400 may include at least one advertisement generating component 402, ad server 404, click/impression log analyzer 410, database 412, computer 414, and a network 401 (e.g., any computer data network that allows communication to occur amongst any/all components of the system). Such a network may be any network and/or combination of networks, including, for example, the Internet. According to such systems, then, advertisements can be delivered by the advertising campaign via any suitable network.

In one embodiment, a content attribute of an advertisement or advertising space may be determined by, for example, classifying the advertisement or advertising space according to, for example, a content type. Additionally, the content type of the advertisement or advertising space may be represented as a feature vector. Determining the content of an advertisement or a advertising space may allow contextually targeted placement of advertisements on the advertising spaces.

The system elements are detailed below, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention. The advertisement generating component 402 can be a machine such as a personal computer with picture making software to create advertisements suitable for display on websites. Ad server 404 can be one or more ad-server computers capable of receiving the advertisements and the instructions about where and when to serve them and carrying out these instructions. In some embodiments, ad server 404 may function as a campaign optimization service 103 or combination of the campaign optimization service and exchange 105 as discussed herein. Network 401 may include a website, such as a website owned by publisher 106, that has agreed (possibly in return for payment) to display the advertisements served by the ad-servers or advertising managers. Network 401 may also include one or more users that view the websites and the advertisements. The click/impression log analyzer 410 is a click/impression analyzer used to determine the results of the showing(s) of the advertisements. The database 412 can be a database used to store the results of the showing(s) of the advertisements. The computer 414 can be a control-related computer used to handle the scheduling of the ads and to provide instructions to the ad-servers, and or implemented consistent with this invention.

Notably, as used herein, the terms “advertisement” or “ad” are also meant to include any content, including information or messages, as well as advertisements, such as, but not limited to, Web banners, product offerings, special non-commercial or commercial messages, or any other displays, graphics, video or audio information. The definitions of other terms used throughout this application, such as “Web page,” “Internet,” “customer,” “user,” “revenue,” terms related to these terms, and other terms, are set forth more fully in the glossary section below.

Furthermore, in this application, the use of the singular includes the plural unless specifically stated otherwise. In this application, the use of “or” means “and/or” unless stated otherwise. Furthermore, the use of the term “including”, as well as other forms, such as “includes” and “included,” is not limiting. Also, terms such as “element” or “component” encompass both elements and components comprising one unit and elements and components that comprise more than one subunit unless specifically stated otherwise.

The section headings used herein are for organizational purposes only, and are not to be construed as limiting the subject matter described. All documents cited in this application, including, but not limited to, patents, patent applications, articles, books, and treatises, are expressly incorporated by reference in their entirety for any purpose.

Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed herein. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope and spirit of the invention being indicated by the following claims.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of allocating electronic content for display on a web page, the method comprising the following operations performed by one or more processors of a server: collecting a plurality of electronic display spaces, each electronic display space having associated electronic display space variables that indicate a first Internet web browser type and a first internet protocol (IP) address;collecting an inventory of electronic content, each electronic content item having associated electronic content variables that indicate a second Internet web browser type and a second IP address;receiving one or more user-specified target variables from a list comprising at least connection speed;saving the one or more user-specified target variables in a cookie and associating the cookie with one or more users;continually collecting data related to one or more of a performance of the electronic content, the plurality of electronic display spaces, at least one user, and at least one publisher;calculating an optimized target inventory percentage based on the at least one electronic display space variable associated with one of the plurality of display spaces, the at least one electronic content variable associated with the plurality of electronic content, and the collected data;continually identifying qualified electronic content items of the electronic content that are qualified to receive an impression at one of the plurality of electronic display spaces based on a match between: the first Internet web browser type and the second Internet web browser type, and based on a geographic region determined from the first IP address and the second IP address;creating a qualified electronic content ranking by sorting the qualified electronic content by the optimized target inventory percentage;based on the qualified electronic content ranking, continually selecting qualified electronic content items until the sum of optimized target inventory percentages of the selected qualified electronic content items is equal to or greater than 100 percent; andtransmitting and displaying an electronic content impression corresponding to the selected qualified electronic content items.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein an initial bid information is received from the user.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the initial target inventory percentage information is received from the user.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of display spaces are continually collected from a plurality of publisher servers.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the inventory is continually collected from one or more user devices.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein each display space has at least one additional display space variable and each electronic content item has at least one additional electronic content variable respectively chosen from the group consisting of: advertising publication, publication type, connection speed, industry, seasonal attribute, calendar attribute, leadback variable, frequency variable, demographic characteristic, content attribute, and time restraint.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein display spaces limit electronic content impressions based on time period.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a user is given the option to reject unwanted inventory.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a request from a publisher for electronic content to fill a specified electronic display space is based on a match between one or more target variables and variables associated with the electronic display space.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a publisher is enabled to set a limit to the percentage of electronic content impressions that may be filled by a user device.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a user who owns a selected qualified electronic content item may choose to reject all or a portion of impressions allocated to the user's selected qualified electronic content item.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the at least one electronic display space variable and the at least one electronic content variable may be categorized as private or public, wherein: access to any public target variable is unrestricted; andaccess to a private target variable is permitted only by an entity with permission to access the private variable.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein permission access to a private variable is limited to an owner of the private variable and an entity that has paid to access the private variable.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein an owner of a variable chooses whether to make the variable public or private.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: determining the content of the plurality of display spaces.

16. A system for allocating electronic content for display on a web page, the system comprising: a storage device that stores a set of instructions;at least one processor that executes the set of instructions to:continually collect a plurality of electronic display spaces, each electronic display space having associated electronic display space variables that indicate a first Internet web browser type and a first internet protocol (IP) address;continually collect an inventory of electronic content, each electronic content item having associated electronic content variables that indicate a second Internet web browser type and a second IP address;continually collect data related to a performance of the electronic content, the plurality of electronic display spaces, at least one user, and at least one publisher;calculate an optimized target inventory percentage based on the at least one electronic display space variable associated with one of the plurality of electronic display spaces, the at least one electronic content variable associated with the electronic content and the collected data;continually identify all qualified electronic content items of the electronic content that are qualified to receive an impression at one of the plurality of electronic display spaces based on a match between the first Internet web browser type and the second Internet web browser type; and based on a geographic region determined from the first IP address and the second IP address;create a qualified electronic content ranking by sorting the qualified electronic content items in descending order by the optimized target inventory percentage;based on the qualified electronic content ranking, continually select qualified electronic content items until the sum of the optimized target inventory percentages of the selected qualified electronic content is equal to or greater than 100 percent; andtransmit and display an electronic content impression corresponding to the selected qualified electronic content items.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium that stores instructions for allocating electronic content items for display on a web page, that, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to: receive a plurality of electronic display spaces from a plurality of publishers of online content, each electronic display space of the plurality of electronic display spaces having associated electronic display space variables that indicate a first Internet web browser type and a first internet protocol (IP) address;receive an inventory of electronic content from a plurality of users, each electronic content item having associated electronic content variables that indicate a second Internet web browser type and a second IP address;determine a target inventory percentage for each electronic content item, wherein the target inventory percentage indicates a percentage of the plurality of electronic display spaces that a user is willing to purchase;continually identify qualified electronic content items of the electronic content that are qualified to receive an impression at one of the plurality of electronic display spaces based on a match between the first Internet web browser type and the second Internet web browser type, and based on a geographic region determined from the first IP address and the second IP address;create a qualified electronic content ranking by sorting the qualified electronic content items in descending order by the target inventory percentage;continually select qualified electronic content items from the beginning of the qualified electronic content ranking until the sum of target inventory percentages of selected qualified electronic content items is equal to or greater than 100 percent; andtransmitting and displaying an electronic content impression corresponding to the selected qualified electronic content items.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 17, the instructions further configured to: collect electronic content variables and a campaign goal from the plurality of announcers; andgenerate target inventory percentage to be sent to the exchange for each of the plurality of electronic content items based on the plurality of electronic content variables, the campaign goals, and an optimization algorithm.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the associated display space variables include a first feature vector indicating a first content type, the associated electronic content variables include a second feature vector indicating a second content type, and identifying qualified electronic content from the plurality of electronic content items is based on a match between the first feature vector and the second feature vector.

20. The system according to claim 16, wherein the associated electronic display space variables include a first feature vector indicating a first content type, the associated electronic display variables include a second feature vector indicating a second content type, and identifying qualified electronic content from the plurality of electronic content items is based on a match between the first feature vector and the second feature vector.