Patent ID: 7747676

Claim:
A method performed by a computing system having a processor and a memory for selecting an advertising message for inclusion in a requested web page, comprising: receiving a page request sent by a user identifying the requested page; adding the requested page to a page request history listing pages recently requested by the user; using a mapping from pages to keywords describing those pages to identify a set of keywords each mapped to from at least one of the pages listed in the page request history; using a mapping from keywords to advertising messages described by those keywords to identify a set of advertising messages each mapped to from at least one of the identified set of keywords; to each of the identified set of advertising messages, attributing a selection weighting reflecting the advertising message's relative performance, wherein the relative performance is determined by a performance score that indicates the extent to which the advertising message has generated revenue; selecting one advertising message of the identified set of advertising messages in accordance with the selection weightings attributed to the advertising messages of the identified set of advertising messages; and responding to the page request with a version of the requested page that includes an instruction to display the selected advertising message within the page, wherein code implementing the method is stored in the memory of the computing system for execution by the processor of the computing system.