Providing and using a quality score in association with the serving of ADS to determine page layout

1 . In a computer system, a method for providing a quality score associated with an advertisement response to be used to assist in determining the display of the advertisement response on a user interface, the method comprising:

identifying a first request;

sending the first request to at least one advertisement supplier;

receiving an advertisement response including at least one advertisement;

evaluating the advertisement response to determine a quality score associated with the advertisement response; and

sending the quality score with the advertisement response to an advertisement requester.

2 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein evaluating the advertisement response to determine a quality score associated with the advertisement response further comprises determining one or more quality sub-scores associated with each advertisement in the advertisement response.

3 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein identifying a first keyword associated with the base request comprises identifying a user response history associated with the first keyword based on at least one of:

click-through-rate (CTR) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

cost-per-click (CPC) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

ad response percentage (ARP) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

call response ratio of advertisements obtained using the first keyword; or

views of advertisements obtained using the first keyword.

4 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein sending the first request to the first advertisement supplier further comprises:

identifying a base request from an advertisement requester;

identifying a first keyword associated with the base request; and

dynamically altering the base request with the first keyword to form an altered request.

5 . The method as recited in claim 4 , wherein identifying a first keyword associated with the base request comprises identifying the first keyword based on at least one of:

the content of the base request based on at least one of:

identifying search terms in the base request;

crawling the content of a URL identified in the base request; or

identifying content in a content, category or hint parameter included with the base request; or

factors that may or may not be related to the content of the base request based on at least one of:

synonyms to content in the base request;

relevancy to the content of the base request;

current popular keywords for a given day;

historically popular keywords for a given day;

the time of day;

the time of week; or

the context of the base request based on at least one of:

identifying trends;

identifying system requirements of a user;

identifying the time and date of the base request;

identifying past user search history; or

identifying user demographics.

6 . The method as recited in claim 4 , wherein evaluating the advertisement response to determine a quality score associated with the advertisement response further comprises determining whether any of the advertisements in the advertisement response were obtained using a backfill mechanism.

7 . The method as recited in claim 6 , wherein the backfill mechanism is at least one of:

sending a second request to the first advertisement supplier within a second fetching period using a different keyword than used in the first request;

sending a first request to a second advertisement supplier within a second fetching period using the same keyword as used in the first request;

sending a first request to a second advertisement supplier within a second fetching period using a different keyword than used in the first request;

accessing a database of filler advertisements within a second fetching period and selecting one or more filler advertisements; or

selecting one or more extra advertisements received from a second advertisement supplier during the first fetching period.

8 . The method as recited in claim 4 , wherein identifying the first keyword to be used to dynamically alter the base request comprises at least one of:

performing the identifying of the first keyword on a periodic or non-periodic basis;

assigning a usage weight to the first keyword indicating the percentage of times that the first keyword should be used to dynamically alter the base request; or

generating an optimized profile identifying at least the first advertisement supplier and the first keyword to be used to dynamically alter the base request.

9 . The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising tracking user response to the advertisements.

10 . In a computer system, a method for using a quality score to determine where to display one or more advertisements on a user interface, the method comprising:

receiving a response to an advertisement request, the response including at least one advertisement;

evaluating the advertisement response to identify a quality score associated with the advertisement response; and

using the quality score to determine where to display at least a portion of the advertisement response on a user interface.

11 . The method as recited in claim 10 , wherein evaluating the advertisement response to identify a quality score associated with the advertisement response further comprises identifying one or more quality sub-scores associated with each advertisement in the advertisement response.

12 . The method as recited in claim 10 , wherein the quality score is based on at least one of:

click-through-rate (CTR) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

cost-per-click (CPC) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

ad response percentage (ARP) of advertisements obtained using the first keyword;

call response ratio of advertisements obtained using the first keyword; or

views of advertisements obtained using the first keyword.

13 . The method as recited in claim 10 , wherein evaluating the advertisement response to identify a quality score associated with the advertisement response further comprises identifying whether any of the advertisements in the advertisement response were obtained using a backfill mechanism.

14 . The method as recited in claim 10 , wherein using the quality score to determine where to display at least a portion of the advertisement response on a user interface further comprises identifying a high-value area of the user interface and determining whether the quality score meets a threshold value to be able to display the at least one advertisement in the high-value area of the user interface.

15 . The method as recited in claim 10 , further comprising displaying the at least one advertisement on the user interface.

16 . The method as recited in claim 10 , further comprising receiving a user response through the user interface.