Patent ID: 8402114

Claim:
A system for selecting and displaying advertisements over a communications network, the system comprising: a database configured to store a plurality of advertisements; and an advertisement selection application configured to: receive a request for advertising from a user computer, wherein the request is generated automatically by the user computer in accordance with instructions provided to the user computer by a content publisher upon the user computer accessing the content publisher's page, and wherein the request further comprises one or more advertisement selection criteria; and in response to the request, select at least one advertisement from the database for display within the page based at least in part on the one or more advertisement selection criteria associated with the request and at least in part on additional criteria that include bid criteria, wherein: at least one of the plurality of advertisements is a graphic corresponding to a single frame of video from a video advertisement; and in response to a selection of the graphic by a user of the user computer, the advertisement selection application is further configured to receive a request from the user computer for the video advertisement corresponding to the graphic.