Limiting Bid Selection to Eligible Content Items

A computer program product embodied in a non-transitive computer-readable medium including instructions, that when executed, cause one or more processors to:

• receive a request for content to be displayed on a resource to a user;
• identify the user;
• identify candidate content items from an inventory of content items that are responsive to the request;
• evaluate the candidate content items including determining bid-eligible content items including content items that satisfy an eligibility threshold based on an eligibility status associated with a respective candidate content item, the eligibility status based at least in part on results associated with one or more past opportunities to present a content item to the identified user;
• conduct an auction to identify a winner from among the bid-eligible content items;
• provide the winning content item responsive to the request;
• and
• update an eligibility status for each of losing content items and the winning content item in the auction.

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more memory elements including instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
• receive a request for content to be displayed on a resource to a user;
• identify the user;
• identify candidate content items from an inventory of content items that are responsive to the request;
• evaluate the candidate content items including determining bid-eligible content items including content items that satisfy an eligibility threshold based on an eligibility status associated with a respective candidate content item, the eligibility status based at least in part on results associated with one or more past opportunities to present a content item to the identified user;
• conduct an auction to identify a winner from among the bid-eligible content items;
• provide the winning content item responsive to the request;
• and
• update an eligibility status for each of losing content items and the winning content item in the auction.