Patent ID: 8549411

Claim:
A method comprising: permitting a computer user to access one or more servers via a network; transferring a copy of software to a computer associated with the computer user, the software being configured to run on the computer to display advertising content and record computer usage information associated with utilization of the computer, the software being configured to allow user messaging capabilities between the user and one or more users, wherein when the program runs on the computer such that one of a number of unique identifiers is recorded by the software; determining a unique identifier associated with the computer, wherein the identifier uniquely identifies information sent from the computer to the one or more servers; determining the computer usage of the computer; retrieving information from a user demographic database associated with the computer user; storing the retrieved information in memory associated with one or more servers; associating the retrieved information with the user; selecting an advertisement to be displayed on the computer, the selection based at least on the usage of the computer together with information associated with the unique identifier identifying the computer; receiving a request for an advertisement from the computer accessing the web page; and providing the selected advertisement for display on the computer in response to the received request.