Patent ID: 8359238
Filing Date: 2013-01-22
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: accessing by one or more computer systems a plurality of metric values for one or more online advertising spaces for placing one or more online advertisements, each metric value representing particular online advertising performance of the online advertising spaces with respect to a particular one of a plurality of online advertising metrics and a user variable group, each online advertising metric representing a particular type of online advertising performance, the user variable group comprising a plurality of user variables, each user variable representing a particular characteristic of online users, the online advertising spaces having metric values with respect to all the online advertising metrics; generating by the one or more computer systems a first user variable subgroup and a second user variable subgroup from the user variable group, wherein the first and second user variable subgroups being mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive with respect to the user variable group, each and every one of the user variables belonging to either the first user variable subgroup or the second user variable subgroup but not both; deriving by the one or more computer systems a plurality of first metric values for the first user variable subgroup, each first metric value representing particular online advertising performance of the online advertising spaces with respect to a particular one of the online advertising metrics and the first user variable subgroup; deriving by the one or more computer systems a plurality of second metric values for the second user variable subgroup, each second metric value representing particular online advertising performance of the online advertising spaces with respect to a particular one of the online advertising metrics and the second user variable subgroup; by the one or more computer systems, for each of the online advertising metrics, using a particular statistical model to calculate a statistical score based on the first and second metric values with respect to the online advertising metric and the first and second user variable subgroups, the particular statistical model selected based on a type of the first and second metric values; performing by the one or more computer systems a split test on the first user variable subgroup and the second user variable subgroup, the split test comprising determining for each of the statistical scores whether the statistical score satisfies a predetermined threshold requirement for the statistical score, the first and second variable subgroups passing the split test if all the statistical scores satisfy their predetermined threshold requirements; determining that the first and second variable subgroups pass the split test; and in response to determining that the first and second variable subgroups pass the split test, splitting the user variable group into two separate user variable groups, the splitting of the user variable group comprising: