Patent ID: 7594189

Claim:
A system for selecting one or more content items in a dynamically-generated display, the system comprising: a web server computer system comprising a memory operatively coupled to a processor, the web server computer system configured to receive a request for a display from a client computer, and to relate the client computer to a particular user; and a content selection computer system in communication with the web server computer system, wherein the content selection computer system is configured to retrieve values for a plurality of attributes of the particular user, and, for each content item of a plurality of content items, to: retrieve a probability model associated with the content item; compute probabilities with the retrieved attribute values for the particular user as inputs for the probability model; retrieve payoff values associated with the one or more user responses to the content item; and retrieve confidence intervals for the payoff values for each content item, wherein a confidence interval is a range of the payoff values bounded by a confidence factor; wherein the content selection computer system is configured to select a content item from the plurality of content items for the dynamically-generated display based at least on the probabilities, payoff values, and confidence intervals.