Computer processes and systems for adaptively controlling the display of items

A system for adaptively controlling the display of an item, the system comprising:

• a server that includes the item in responses to requests received from users over a network such that the item is exposed to users in each of a plurality of contexts, said item being selectable by users, and being one of a plurality items that are displayable in responses to the requests;
• an exposure tracking system that tracks context-specific exposure of the item in each of the plurality of contexts;
• an activity tracking system that tracks context-specific user activity associated with the item in each of the plurality of contexts;
• an item weighting system that generates context-specific item weights for the item for each of the plurality of contexts, said context-specific item weights being dependent upon the context-specific exposure and context-specific user activity in the respective contexts, and not being specific to a particular user;
• and
• a display control system that uses at least the context-specific item weights to control a display of the item, in the responses of said server, in the respective contexts to which such item weights correspond;
• wherein the item weighting system updates the context-specific item weights to reflect tracked item exposure and user activity resulting from prior values of said context-specific item weights.

A system for selecting items to display to users, comprising:

• a server system that is responsive to user requests received over a network by generating and outputting ordered displays of items, said ordered displays being dependent upon the contexts of the requests;
• an exposure tracking system that tracks, for each of a plurality of items, item exposure events resulting from inclusion of the item in responses of the server system to the user requests, including item exposure events that do not result in user selection of the item, wherein the exposure tracking system tracks the item exposure events separately for each of a plurality of contexts;
• an activity tracking system that tracks item selection actions performed by users in response to the item exposure events, wherein the activity tracking system tracks the item selection events separately for each of the plurality of contexts;
• and
• an item weighting system that generates, for at least a first item of the plurality of items, a plurality of context-specific item weights, each of which corresponds to a different one of the contexts, said context-specific item weights being dependent upon the item exposure events and item selection events tracked by the exposure tracking system and activity tracking system, respectively, wherein each context-specific item weight is non-user-specific;
• wherein the server system uses the context-specific item weights for the first item to separately control a display of the first item in each of the plurality of contexts.