System and method for generating display advertisements from search based keyword advertisements

An online advertising system comprising:

• a computer readable memory for storing instructions;
• a processing unit for executing the instructions stored in the computer readable memory, when executed by the processing unit, the instructions configuring the processing unit and the computer readable memory to provide:
• a keyword generation unit for generating one or more advertising keywords from a received category profile defining a classification hierarchy, the generated one or more advertising keywords associated with the classification hierarchy of the received category profile, the generated one or more advertising keywords for use in selecting one or more candidate advertisement messages from a plurality of advertisement messages;
• an advertisement selection unit for receiving one or more candidate advertisement messages selected from the plurality of advertisement messages, each of the received candidate advertisement messages comprising a text advertisement associated with at least one of the generated one or more advertising keywords, and selecting one advertisement message from the one or more received candidate advertisement messages based upon one or more characteristics associated with the received one or more candidate advertisement messages;
• and
• a creative advertisement assembly unit for generating an advertisement image based on the text advertisement of the selected one advertisement message for display in network based content.