Patent ID: 7870017

Claim:
A method for determining a bidding strategy for an organization to buy advertising by placing one or more bids amongst a plurality of marketing options at one or more web sites or search engines, the method comprising: facilitating, by a computing device having a processor and a memory, prior to the organization placing the one or more bids among the marketing options at the one or more web sites or search engines, specification of one or more models that model one or more performance metrics for the plurality of marketing options based at least in part on a plurality of positions occupied by the marketing options in a selected one of on-line query answer sets and contextual advertisements, wherein the plurality of positions occupied by the marketing options are responsive to monetary resources allocated to the one or more bids placed among the marketing options; determining, by the computing device, prior to the organization placing the one or more bids, a bidding strategy for the organization to direct allocation of monetary resources to place the one or more bids among the plurality of marketing options at the one or more web sites or search engines, wherein determining includes quantitatively finding an optimal solution for an objective function using the specified one or more models, the objective function being one of maximizing clicks to information associated with a product or a service or maximizing revenue of a product or a service, the objective function having variables associated with the allocation of monetary resources for the one or more bids; and after determining the bidding strategy, and prior to the organization placing the one or more bids, the computing device generating a report to report on the determined bidding strategy for the organization to allocate monetary resources to place the one or more bids among the marketing options at the one or more web sites or search engines.