Patent attributes
Bid amounts for electronic advertising can be adjusted throughout the day, or for different days, according to a day parting schedule based on factors such as variations in efficiency. For any set of advertisements grouped based on factors such as keyword, landing page, geographic location, user demographic, etc., values can be forecast for each time period throughout the day. A variation threshold is used to group adjacent periods of time into partitions, and the threshold can be varied until the number of partitions meets the requirements of the provider with whom the advertisement is to be placed. An adjustment factor can be determined for each partition using the forecast information, and these factors can be uploaded to the provider to adjust the base bid price for any advertisement in that group at the appropriate times throughout the day.