Patent ID: 8719097

Claim:
A method for scheduling insertions of advertisements from an advertising campaign into available slots in a broadcast, the method comprising: maintaining information about available advertising slots for a plurality of broadcast stations; receiving criteria, including at least one external criterion, and a cost that an advertiser is willing to pay, for the insertion of advertisements in a broadcast; bidding in a first auction to schedule available advertising slots that are priced lower than the received cost; monitoring states of the at least one external criterion, wherein a first one of the states corresponds to the at least one criterion being met, and a second one of the states corresponds to the at least one criterion not being met; collecting listener inquiries from each previously broadcast slot of advertising; calculating, based on (i) the received cost, (ii) the collected listener inquiries, and (iii) the monitored states of the at least one external criterion, a cost per response for each previously broadcast slot of advertisement, wherein the previously broadcast ad slots had been scheduled in accordance with the at least one external criterion by using the first auction; determining target combinations of ad of slot parameters and states of the at least one external criterion, the target combinations corresponding to the previously broadcast ad slots that had the lowest calculated cost per response; and automatically switching from bidding in the first auction to bidding in a second auction to schedule available advertising slots that have combinations of ad slot parameters and states of the at least one external criterion within the determined target combinations, wherein the calculating and the determining the target combinations is performed by a computer system.