Patent ID: 7788164

Claim:
A method using computer executable instructions, executable by a computing device for setting a market price for an auction of a number of advertising opportunities, each of the advertising opportunities being presentable on a number of pages and operable to present a selectable advertisement, the method comprising: setting, by the computing device, the market price for the auction of advertising opportunities based on supply and demand, the market price being calculated with a supply side including a number of items to be sold, and a number of pseudo items, and a demand side including received bids, wherein the pseudo items are not real items and neither actually are nor can be sold to bidders but are assignable to bids below the market price; determining, by the computing device, the number of advertising opportunities by using historical data from an online search engine provider, the online search engine provider to forecast a number of searches performed for search terms conducted on certain days, months or seasons of a year to yield results for a known number of advertising opportunities; creating, by the computing device, an unspent money slot; receiving, on the computing device, a plurality of bids for the advertising opportunities, each of the bids including a bid price and an auction budget; calculating, by the computing device, a market clearing price based on the number of advertising opportunities; setting, by the computing device, the market price to one of the market clearing price and a value greater than the market clearing price, or allowing a bidder to set the market price with a second highest bid; selling, by the computing device, advertising opportunities to the bidders submitting bids at or above the market price; assigning each of the number of advertising opportunities to each of the bids at least equivalent to the market price; presenting, by the computing device, on web pages that have been generated by the online service provider, advertisements associated with the bidders that have been assigned advertising opportunities; and refunding money in the unspent money slot.