Cross-Channel User Tracking Systems, Methods and Devices

• US 20140120864A1
• Filed: 03/15/2013
• Published: 05/01/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mgage LLC (Kaleyra, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Velti Mobile Platforms Ltd. (Velti PLC)
• Inventors: Manolarakis, Christos, Sutterlin, Mark, Milkowski, Andrew, Zhang, Guowei, Luxenberg, Stephanie, Landsman, Rick, Carron, Maurice J.
• Granted Patent: US 10,616,782 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/405
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/23 for mobile advertising

Abstract

In part, the invention relates to systems and methods suitable for operating a client side platform for deterministically correlating a unique mobile user across multiple marketing communication channels using a universal identifier to provide a deterministic mapping of individual channel user identifiers. In an embodiment, the invention relates to systems and methods suitable for operating a client side platform for probabilistically correlating a unique mobile user across multiple marketing communication channels to provide a mapping of individual channel user identifiers. The systems and methods can be used to identify user activity across different marketing communication channels accessed with a given mobile device.

Claims

1. A computer-based method of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:

generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;

generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;

storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;

correlating, using an application installed on the mobile device, the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile; and

associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels.

2. The computer-based method of claim 1 further comprising generating a third non-universal user identifier associated with a third communication channel in response to a third action of the mobile device.

3. The computer-based method of claim 2 wherein the first, second, and third communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, interacting with social applications, and downloading an application.

4. The computer-based method of claim 1 wherein the profile is generated using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifiers.

5. The computer-based method of claim 4 wherein the mobile device channel specific identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers.

6. The computer-based method of claim 1 wherein associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions is performed using a computing device running a Bayseian Network to perform probabilistic user matching.

7. The computer-based method of claim 1 further comprising comparing one or more user profiles to incoming request profiles using a probabilistic Bayesian network running on computing device.

9. The system of claim 6 further comprising a compact uniform resource locator (URL) software module configured to compact a mobile web URL accessed by the mobile device and generate a non-universal user identifier associated with the compacted mobile URL.

10. The system of claim 6 wherein the communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, and downloading an application.

11. The system of claim 6 further comprising a privacy software module configured to enable the user to opt out of being tracked using a universal identifier.

12. The system of claim 6 further comprising a privacy software module.

8. A computer-based system of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:

one or more receivers, executing on a computing device, the one or more receivers configured to collect the information from the plurality of communication channels;

an event ID generator configured to provide non-universal user identifiers that can be matched to a universal user identifier;

a data repository comprising a plurality of non-universal user identifiers, each non-universal user identifier associated with one communication channel of the plurality of communication channels; and

a federation server configured to receive user actions associated with each communication channel from a mobile device client application, the federation server configured to generate a universal identifier using the received user actions and the plurality of non-universal user identifiers.

13. A computer program product residing on a computer readable storage medium having a plurality of instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations for tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels, the operations comprising:

generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;

generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;

storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;

correlating, using an application installed on the mobile device, the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile; and

associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise generating a third non-universal user identifier associated with a third communication channel in response to a third action of the mobile device.

15. The computer program product of claim 14 wherein the first, second, and third communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, interacting with social applications, and downloading an application.

16. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the profile is generated using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifiers.

17. The computer program product of claim 16 wherein the mobile device channel specific identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers.

18. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions is performed using a computing device running a Bayseian Network to perform probabilistic user matching.

19. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the operations further comprise comparing one or more user profiles to incoming request profiles using a probabilistic Bayesian network running on a computing device.