Patent ID: 6985882

Claim:
A method for buying and selling media advertising units over a distributed communication network, comprising the steps of: providing a server on said network, said server including a database containing information pertaining to available advertising units in conjunction with specific media content provided by media content providers; providing buyers of said advertising units access to said database over said network, whereby said buyers may enter desired search parameters into a search engine and receive search results indicating particular advertising units meeting the search criteria; receiving bids on advertising units selected by buyers from said search, and communicating said bids to sellers of said advertising units; and providing sellers of said advertising units access to said database over said network, whereby said sellers may enter said information, receive bids entered by said buyers, accept said bids and enter contracts into said server for communication to said buyers over said network; wherein said advertising units comprise time slots associated with television content and wherein said information includes program times, days of week, category according to defined time segments, and demographic viewer information.