Patent ID: 7882046

Claim:
An ad-serving system executable on one or more processors for providing ad selections, comprising: an item management module for offering items to users, the item management module including a data store for maintaining a catalog of the items being offered; a plurality of content providers each having a plurality of advertisements and each advertisement being associated with a unique identifier, a plurality of affiliate modules for interacting with the users, each affiliate module having one or more tag identifiers; and an ad system for generating ad selections which are associated with the items being offered by the item management module, the ad selections being presentable to the users in the context of electronic services provided by the plurality of affiliate modules, wherein the ad system comprises: an ad serving module for providing ad selections to the users; and an ad selection module for generating ad selections to be delivered to the users, wherein the ad selection module is operative to generate the ad selections by choosing from plural sets of ad candidates, the choosing based at least in part on a ranking of the unique identifiers for a particular one of the tag identifiers, each set being obtained from a respective one of the plurality of content providers and the plural set of ad candidates being provided using plural respective ad selection paradigms, wherein the ad selection module is operative to generate the ad selections based on at least one aspect of an ad presentation context, said at least one aspect comprising text adjacent to an ad space designated for presentation of an ad.