Patent ID: 8566156

Claim:
A method comprising: for each of a plurality of online ad campaigns that corresponds to a category of a plurality of sub-categories, determining, by a processor, a plurality of interest values of a plurality of respective segments of users who are targeted by that online ad campaign, each interest value indicating an amount of interest that the respective segment of the users has with respect to that online ad campaign, each segment of the users being associated with a respective topic; determining, by a processor, a plurality of super-segments, each super-segment including a respective subset of the segments of the users, in accordance with an eigenvector analysis technique that is performed with respect to the pluralities of interest values, the subset of segments in each super-segment having interest values that are correlated with regard to the plurality of online ad campaigns to an extent that exceeds a designated threshold, the plurality of super-segments being un-correlated; for each super-segment, determining, by a processor, a plurality of subsets of the interest values of the subset of the segments that is included in that super-segment, each subset of the interest values indicating an interest of the subset of the segments that is included in that super-segment with respect to a corresponding category of the plurality of categories, including, for each of the plurality of online ad campaigns, dividing a first cumulative interest value that represents a sum of the interest values of the subset of the segments that is included in each super-segment by a second cumulative interest value that represents a sum of the interest values of the plurality of segments of the users who are reached by that online ad campaign to provide a respective indexed interest value; and determining, by a processor, one or more of the super-segments to be targeted by a specified online advertisement that corresponds to a specified category of the plurality of categories based the indexed interest values for each of the plurality of online ad campaigns.