Patent ID: 8095560

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for aggregating event data from an advertising system for billing purposes, the method comprising: receiving the event data for a time period from the advertising system, the event data comprising a plurality of event data records each corresponding to an advertising event occurring during the time period, each event data record comprising a sequence of one or more hop data records, each hop data record including a source entity identifier corresponding to a source entity from whom payment for the corresponding advertising event is owed, a target entity identifier corresponding to a target entity to whom payment for the corresponding advertising event is owed, a deal identifier corresponding to a deal between the source entity and the target entity, and a payment amount relating to the advertising event; for each of selected ones of the hop data records for which the target entity identifier corresponds to a virtual entity, generating a virtual hop data record including the source entity identifier and the deal identifier from the selected hop data record and the target entity identifier and payment amount from a next hop data record immediately following the selected hop data record in the event data; aggregating the payment amounts in the event data for each unique combination of source entity, target entity, and deal using the virtual hop data records and disregarding the selected hop data records; and facilitating payment for each of the advertising events represented in the event data using the aggregated payment amounts.