Patent ID: 7363254

Claim:
An automated method for web ranking of bids, comprising the steps of: tracking Internet user activity generated to an Online Marketing Media (OMM) and an advertiser's website when an Internet user conducting a web-based search on the OMM enters at least one search term relating to a service or product of the advertiser; acquiring data relating to the Internet user activity; sorting said data to remove duplicate information; compiling a master data set from said data wherein data values are arranged according to time of Internet user activity and a designated primary key; determining sufficiency of data based on specified conditions; calculating an acceptable new maximum bid for said search term; determining whether said maximum bid is a justified expense for the advertiser in light of profit determining factors, said profit determining factors comprising an expected return on advertising spend (ROAS) value, a minimum acceptable return on advertising spend (ROAS) value, a maximum return on advertising spend (ROAS) value, a computational linguistics value of the search term, and the new maximum acceptable bid value; determining whether to maintain, modify, or remove a bid for a search term; retrieving information on competitor's bids; identifying desired ranking; preparing an insertion order with an appropriate bid for achieving the desired ranking; and automatically uploading the insertion order to the OMM.