Patent ID: 7152202

Claim:
A method of allocating a number N of available display slots on a Web page among a plurality of different sources of display items, said method comprising: (a) defining, for each source of display items, a candidate set of items to be displayed, wherein the number of items of a first candidate set from a first source is less than a number of items of a second candidate set from a second source; (b) weighting items in the first set by multiplying the number of items in the first set by a factor producing a multiplied first set that is equal to the number of items of the second set, the combination of the multiplied first set and the second set forming a pool of display items, the pool having a number of display items greater than N; (c) selecting display items from the pool of display items in a manner that avoids multiple selection of the same item for display; and (d) inserting up to N of the selected items in the available display slots of the Web page.