Using user search behavior to plan online advertising campaigns

A computer program product for generating targeting parameters of a media buy plan for advertisements to be displayed in conjunction with presenting web pages, based on a history of search events, the computer program product comprising at least one computer-readable medium having computer program instructions stored therein which are operable to cause at least one computing device to:

• receive key phrases relative to a subject of the advertisements to be displayed;
• provide the received key phrases as proposed key phrases to determine, from search events indicative of historical data of uses of a search service, a first subportion of search events for queries of the search service with the proposed key phrases and a second subportion of search events for queries of the search service not with the proposed key phrases;
• apply classification processing to determine potential targeting parameters associated with the first subportion and with the second subportion to identify potential targeting parameters that, statistically, contribute to membership in the first sub-population and in the second sub-population, respectively;
• and
• associate statistics with the potential targeting parameters, based on the historical data, indicative of factors usable to determine whether to use the potential targeting parameters as actual targeting parameters of the media buy plan.

A computing system including at least one computing device, configured to generate targeting parameters of a media buy plan for advertisements to be displayed in conjunction with presenting web pages, based on a history of search events, the at least one computing device configured to:

• receive key phrases relative to a subject of the advertisements to be displayed;
• provide the received key phrases as proposed key phrases to determine, from search events indicative of historical data of uses of a search service, a first subportion of search events for queries of the search service with the proposed key phrases and a second subportion of search events for queries of the search service not with the proposed key phrases;
• apply classification processing to determine potential targeting parameters associated with the first subportion and with the second subportion to identify potential targeting parameters that, statistically, contribute to membership in the first sub-population and in the second sub-population, respectively;
• and
• associate statistics with the potential targeting parameters, based on the historical data, indicative of factors usable to determine whether to use the potential targeting parameters as actual targeting parameters of the media buy plan.