The present teaching relates to generating an updated model related to advertisement selection. In one example, a request is obtained for updating a model to be utilized for selecting an advertisement. A plurality of copies of the model is generated. The model is pre-selected based on a performance metric related to advertisement selection. Based on each of the plurality of copies, a candidate model is created by modifying one or more parameters of the copy of the model to create a plurality of candidate models. One of the plurality of candidate models is selected based on the performance metric. The steps of generating, creating, and selecting are repeated until a predetermined condition is met. The model is updated with the latest selected candidate model when the predetermined condition is met.