Patent ID: 8666796

Claim:
A method performed by data processing apparatus, the method comprising: obtaining, by a data processing apparatus, reservation data for a resource that is provided by a publisher, the reservation data specifying: a reservation period; and a number of impression reservations for the reservation period, the number of impression reservations being a number of resource requests for which an ad slot of the resource has been reserved by one or more reservation content item providers; receiving, by the data processing apparatus and during the reservation period, content item request data specifying that the resource was requested; identifying, by the data processing apparatus, one or more candidate content item providers from the one or more reservation content item providers; determining, by the data processing apparatus, an expected revenue that will be obtained by selecting one of the candidate content item providers to provide a content item in response to receiving the content item request data; providing, by the data processing apparatus and to a content item exchange, auction data including a reserve price that is based on the expected revenue; receiving, by the data processing apparatus, positive response data from the content item exchange, the positive response data specifying that the content item exchange will provide an exchange content item for a price that meets the reserve price; and in response to receiving the positive response data, selecting, by the data processing apparatus, the exchange content item as the content item to be provided in response to receiving the content item request data.