Patent ID: 8719396

Claim:
A method of reconciliation of a selection of an advertisement to determine whether the selection is valid, the method comprising: (a) receiving, by a server, from a client a request to supplement content on a web page being viewed by a user, the request comprising a publisher identifier that identifies a publisher of a web site of the web page being viewed on the client and on which an advertisement is to be served; (b) identifying, by the server, for a response to the request the advertisement and a unique advertisement identifier for the advertisement; (c) generating, by the server, a unique advertisement view identifier and pairing the unique advertisement view identifier with the unique advertisement identifier to identify a single instance of serving the advertisement to the client; (d) storing, by the server, to a database the unique advertisement view identifier and the unique advertisement identifier; (e) transmitting, by the server, to the client the response comprising payload having executable code that includes a URL of a click handling page, the unique advertisement identifier and the unique advertisement view identifier; (f) receiving, by the server from the client, responsive to a pointer over event triggered by the client via a pointing device of the client moving a pointer over a link to the advertisement corresponding to the unique advertisement identifier, a page call to the click handling page and a query string comprising the unique advertisement identifier and the unique advertisement view identifier; and (g) determining, by the server, that the unique advertisement identifier and the unique advertisement view identifier received from the client match the unique advertisement view identifier and the unique advertisement identifier stored in the database that maintains a list of valid unique advertisement identifier and unique advertisement view identifier pairs issued within a predetermined rolling time period and that the link to the advertisement corresponding to the unique advertisement identifier has not been previously served.