APPROXIMATING UNIQUE ADVERTISEMENT IMPRESSIONS ON A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM

• US 20130046615A1
• Filed: 08/17/2011
• Published: 02/21/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/17/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Liyanage, Janaka
• Granted Patent: US 10,783,547 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.45
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0242 Determining effectiveness of advertisements

Abstract

Unique user impressions of advertisements on a social networking system may be tracked and approximated by the social networking system. After an advertisement is delivered to a user, identifying information about the advertisement is associated with the user if the advertisement was not previously presented to the user. An impression count records the number of unique impressions of the advertisement by users of the social networking system up to a predetermined threshold. After the predetermined threshold is reached, the social networking system records a sampling of the unique impressions. Upon request for the number of unique impressions for an advertisement, the social networking system may extrapolate the recorded unique impressions based on the predetermined threshold. In one embodiment, a time degradation factor may be applied to the sampling rate so that recent impressions are sampled more than older impressions.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing an advertisement to a plurality of users of a social networking system;

recording a sampled count of unique user impressions of the advertisement for a subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system using a sampling rate for unique user impressions over a predetermined threshold;

responsive to receiving a request for a unique impression metric for the advertisement, determining the unique impression metric for the advertisement based on the sampled count, the predetermined threshold, and information about the subset of the plurality of users; and

providing the unique impression metric for the advertisement in response to the request.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing an advertisement to a plurality of users of a social networking system further comprises:

providing the advertisement to the plurality of users of the social networking system during an advertisement window comprising a predetermined time period associated with the advertisement.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein recording a sampled count of unique user impressions of the advertisement for a subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system using the sampling rate for unique user impressions over a predetermined threshold further comprises:

retrieving a count of unique user impressions of the advertisement provided to the subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system;

responsive to the count not reaching the predetermined threshold, incrementing the count for each unique impression of the advertisement provided to a user of the subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system;

responsive to the count reaching the predetermined threshold, incrementing the count according to the sampling rate associated with the advertisement for each unique impression of the advertisement provided to a user of the subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system; and

storing the count as the sampled count of unique user impressions.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein a subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system comprises a random sampling of the plurality of users of the social networking system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the unique impression metric for the advertisement based on the sampled count, the predetermined threshold, and information about the subset of the plurality of users further comprises:

responsive to the sampled count exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining an intermediary count by extrapolating a portion of the sampled count that exceeds the predetermined threshold based on the sampling rate associated with the advertisement;

responsive to the sampled count not exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining the sampled count as the intermediary count; and

determining the unique impression metric for the advertisement by extrapolating the intermediary count based on the information about the subset of the plurality of users.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein information about the subset of the plurality of the users includes a ratio of the subset of the plurality of users and the plurality of users.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein information about the subset of the plurality of users comprises a percentage of targeted users of the social networking system for the advertisement.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein information about the subset of the plurality of users comprises a percentage of interested users of the social networking system for the advertisement.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the sampling rate includes a time degradation factor applied to unique user impressions of the advertisement.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the unique impression metric of the advertisement in response to the request further comprises:

providing breakdowns of the unique impression metric of the advertisement, the breakdowns describing the unique user impressions of the advertisement through a plurality of communication channels.

11. A method comprising:

delivering an advertisement to a user of a set of sampled users of a social networking system; and

responsive to determining that the advertisement was not previously delivered to the user,

recording identifying information about the advertisement in a user profile object associated with the user, the user profile object stored on the social networking system;

responsive to a count associated with the advertisement not reaching a predetermined threshold, incrementing the count;

responsive to the count associated with the advertisement reaching the predetermined threshold, incrementing the count according to a sampling rate associated with the advertisement; and

storing the count in association with the advertisement on the social networking system.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the set of sampled users includes influenced users that receive the advertisement as a result of another user sharing the advertisement with the influenced users.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the set of sampled users includes interested users that receive the advertisement as a result of a page on the social networking system associated with the interested users delivering the advertisement to the interested users.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the set of sampled users includes targeted users that receive the advertisement as a result of the social networking system targeting the targeted users based on profile information associated with the targeted users matching targeting criteria for the advertisement.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein determining that the advertisement was not previously delivered to the user further comprises:

retrieving a user profile object for the user; and

determining that identifying information about the advertisement is not associated with the user profile object for the user.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein determining that the advertisement was not previously delivered to the user further comprises:

retrieving a user profile object for the user; and

determining that identifying information about the advertisement is not associated with the user profile object for the user.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein incrementing the count according to a sampling rate associated with the advertisement further comprises:

determining a modulo operation on a user identifier associated with the user, the modulo operation based on the sampling rate associated with the advertisement; and

responsive to the modulo operation on the user identifier returning a zero, incrementing the count.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein incrementing the count according to a sampling rate comprises a recurring action that increments the count according to a predetermined rate.

19. A method comprising:

receiving a request for a unique impression metric of an advertisement provided to users of a social networking system;

identifying a recorded impression count associated with the advertisement for a set of sampled users of the social networking system;

determining an extrapolated impression count based on the recorded impression count, a sampling rate associated with the recorded impression count, and a predetermined threshold associated with the recorded impression count;

determining the unique impression metric of the advertisement based on the extrapolated impression count and information about the set of sampled users; and

providing the unique impression metric of the advertisement in response to the request.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein receiving a request for a unique impression metric of an advertisement provided to users of a social networking system further comprises:

receiving the request as an application programming interface (API) call to the social networking system from an advertiser of the advertisement, wherein the request includes identifying information about the advertisement.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein receiving a request for a unique impression metric of an advertisement provided to users of a social networking system further comprises retrieving a content object associated with the advertisement based on identifying information about the advertisement included in the request and wherein the recorded impression count associated with the advertisement for a set of sampled users of the social networking system is identified in the retrieved content object associated with the advertisement.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein identifying a recorded impression count associated with the advertisement for a set of sampled users of the social networking system further comprises:

retrieving a content object associated with the advertisement based on identifying information about the advertisement included in the request; and

retrieving the recorded impression count from the content object associated with the advertisement.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein determining an extrapolated impression count based on the recorded impression count, a sampling rate associated with the recorded impression count, and a predetermined threshold associated with the recorded impression count further comprises:

responsive to the recorded impression count exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining the extrapolated impression count by extrapolating a portion of the recorded impression count that exceeds the predetermined threshold, the portion extrapolated according to the sampling rate associated with the recorded impression count, the determined extrapolated impression count comprising the extrapolated portion and the predetermined threshold; and

responsive to the recorded impression count not exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining the extrapolated impression count as the recorded impression count.

24. The method of claim 19, wherein determining the unique impression metric of the advertisement based on the extrapolated impression count and information about the set of sampled users further comprises:

determining the unique impression metric of the advertisement by extrapolating the extrapolated impression count based on the information about the set of sampled users, the information about the set of sampled users including statistical information about the users of the social networking system to approximate the unique impression metric.

25. The method of claim 19, wherein providing the unique impression metric of the advertisement in response to the request further comprises:

providing for display in the social networking system the unique impression metric of the advertisement to an advertiser associated with the advertisement.

26. The method of claim 19, wherein providing the unique impression metric of the advertisement in response to the request further comprises:

providing the unique impression metric of the advertisement to an advertiser associated with the advertisement in a user interface for visualizing advertising campaigns associated with the advertiser.

27. The method of claim 19, wherein the sampling rate comprises a fraction and wherein determining an extrapolated impression count based on the recorded impression count, a sampling rate associated with the recorded impression count, and a predetermined threshold associated with the recorded impression count further comprises:

responsive to the recorded impression count exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining the extrapolated impression count by extrapolating a portion of the recorded impression count that exceeds the predetermined threshold, the portion multiplied by an inverse of the sampling rate associated with the recorded impression count, the determined extrapolated impression count comprising the extrapolated portion and the predetermined threshold; and

responsive to the recorded impression count not exceeding the predetermined threshold, determining the extrapolated impression count as the recorded impression count.