Patent ID: 8224897

Claim:
A method comprising: selecting, by an advertiser, an advertisement associated with an item for sale on behalf of a particular user; receiving the particular user's consent to allow the advertiser to select the advertisement and share the advertisement with a group of users; sharing, by the advertiser, the advertisement as a personal message from the particular user with a respective instant messaging client associated with each user of a group of users, each of which includes the particular user as a contact, on the respective instant messaging client and each of the instant messaging clients displaying the personal message from the particular user that includes the advertisement, the sharing comprising transmitting the advertisement to the group of users to enable association between the advertisement and the particular user on a contacts list of each user of the group of users; selecting, by the advertiser, additional differing advertisements to be shared, the sharing comprising transmitting the additional differing advertisements selected by the advertiser based upon an agreed-upon schedule between the particular user and the advertiser such that the personal message of the particular user displays one of the additional differing advertisements a user specified percentage of time on each of the instant messaging clients as the transmission cycles through the additional differing advertisements; receiving an indication that a user of the group of users has purchased the item for sale in response to the sharing of the advertisement as the personal message from the particular user; and bestowing a monetary benefit upon the particular user in response to the receiving of the indication that the user of the group of users has purchased the item for sale associated with the advertisement wherein the selecting an advertisement, the receiving the particular user's consent, the sharing, the selecting additional differing advertisements, the receiving the indication, and the bestowing are performed on one or more computers.