Determining advertising effectiveness outside of a social networking system

• US 8,874,639 B2
• Filed: 12/22/2010
• Issued: 10/28/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lindsay, Robert Taaffe, Bruich, Sean Michael, Smallwood, Bradley Hopkins
• Primary Examiner(s): Mejia, Anthony
• Application Number:
  US12/977,038
• Publication Number:
  US 20120166520A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,406 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709/219, 705/10, 705/14
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0488 using a touch-screen or digitiser, e.g. input of commands through traced gestures
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1396 specially adapted for monitoring users' activity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

A social networking system or other user registration site builds a log of exposures by users to advertisements outside of the user registration site to determine their effectiveness. For each user exposed to an advertisement, a log entry is created indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement. Tracking pixels are embedded into advertisements that, when accessed, enable the social networking system or user registration site to log access to the advertisement by the user. From the log files, the user registration site identifies exposed users and selects unexposed users with similar demographics and/or behavior information to generate a control group. The two groups can be surveyed about the advertisement to determine its effectiveness. The user exposure information also can be used to retarget advertisements, to measure advertising effectiveness on connections of exposed users, and to measure actions of exposed users.

Claims

1. A method for measuring advertising effectiveness for advertisements external to a social networking system, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users of the social networking system;

maintaining demographic and behavior information associated with the user, and

sending a social networking system cookie to a client device associated with the user of the social networking system;

building a log of user advertising exposures outside of the social networking system by, for each of the plurality of users exposed to an advertisement, creating a log entry indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement; and

building a control group of unexposed users of the social networking system, the control group selected by comparing the demographic and behavior information between selected unexposed users of the plurality of users with at least a subset of the users exposed to the advertisement;

wherein at least one exposed user and at least one control group user are provided a survey to determine the effectiveness of the advertisement.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein building a log of user advertising exposures outside of the social networking system further comprises, for each of the plurality of users exposed to an advertisement:

receiving an indication of the advertisement accessed by the client device; and

receiving identification of the user associated with the client device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the identification of the user associated with the client device is a user identifier for the social networking system.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the identification of the user associated with the client device is the social networking system cookie, the method further comprising:

determining a user identifier from the social networking system cookie.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

sending, to a provider of the advertisement, information for embedding a tracking pixel in the advertisement,

wherein the tracking pixel enables the identification of the user associated with the client device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the user advertising exposures are monitored using a tracking pixel embedded in the advertisement.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein building a control group of unexposed users of the social networking system further comprises:

determining the exposed subset of users based on the log of user advertising exposures;

generating a candidate control group of users of the social networking system selected by comparison of the demographic and behavior information of selected users of the plurality of users with the demographic and behavior information associated with the exposed subset of users; and

eliminating from the candidate control group those of the selected users who have a log entry indicating that they have been exposed to the advertisement, thereby forming the control group of unexposed users.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the selected users are randomly selected from the plurality of users.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein demographic and behavior information associated with the user comprises at least one selected from the group consisting of:

demographic data, behavioral data, and other social data.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

for each of the plurality of users of a social networking system, maintaining a set of connections with other users of the plurality of users;

wherein generating the candidate control group of users of the social networking system comprises comparison of the demographic and behavior information of one of the exposed subset of users to the demographic and behavior information for a selected user who is among the set of connections of the one of the exposed subset of users.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing the survey to the at least one exposed user and at least one control group user.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing survey result data to a provider of the advertisement.

13. A method for surveying advertising effectiveness for advertisements external to a social networking system, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users of the social networking system;

maintaining a user account including demographic and behavior information associated with the user,

sending a social networking system cookie to a client device associated with the user of a social networking system;

building a log of user advertising exposures outside of the social networking system by, for each of the plurality of users exposed to an advertisement;

receiving an indication of the advertisement accessed by the client device,

receiving an identification of the user associated with the client device, and

creating a log entry in the log of user advertising exposures indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement; and

building a control group of unexposed users of the social networking system, by;

determining an exposed subset of users of the social networking system comprising users exposed to the advertisement based on the log of user advertising exposures,

generating a candidate control group of users of the social networking system, the candidate control group of users selected by comparison of the demographic and behavior information of selected users of the plurality of users with the demographic and behavior information associated with the exposed subset of users, and

eliminating from the candidate control group those of the selected users who have a log entry indicating that they have been exposed to the advertisement, thereby forming the control group of unexposed users of the social networking system;

wherein at least one exposed user and one control group user are provided a survey to determine the effectiveness of the advertisement.

14. A method for building a log of user advertising exposures external to a social networking system, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users of the social networking system;

maintaining demographic and behavior information associated with the user, and

sending a social networking system cookie to a client device associated with the user during a user session;

sending, to a provider of an advertisement, information for embedding a tracking pixel into the advertisement on a web page associated with the provider; and

for each of the plurality of users exposed to the advertisement;

receiving an indication of the advertisement accessed by the client device,

receiving the cookie identifying the user associated with the client device during the user session, the identification enabled by the tracking pixel locating the cookie on the client device, and

creating a log entry in the log of user advertising exposures indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

determining, based on the log of user advertising exposures, whether to serve the advertisement again to a particular user of the plurality of users.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the particular user was exposed to the advertisement, and wherein determining whether to serve the second advertisement comprises determining whether to serve the advertisement to the particular user an additional time.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein determining whether to serve the second advertisement comprises serving the advertisement only if the particular user was not exposed to the advertisement.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

determining, based on the log of user advertising exposures, whether to serve a second advertisement to a particular user of the plurality of users, wherein the second advertisement is served to the particular user only if the particular user was previously exposed to the advertisement.

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

for each of the plurality of users of a social networking system, maintaining a set of connections with other users of the plurality of users;

measuring advertisement effectiveness by surveying users from the set of connections who have not been directly exposed to the advertisement.

20. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

measuring actions of the exposed users within the social networking system associated with the advertisement.

21. The method of claim 14, wherein the identification of the user associated with the client device is a user identifier for the user in the social networking system.

22. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

sending, to a provider of the advertisement, information for embedding the tracking pixel in the advertisement.

23. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

building a control group of unexposed users of the social networking system, selected by comparing the demographic and behavior information between selected unexposed users of the plurality of users with a subset of the users exposed to the advertisement; and

wherein at least one exposed user and at least one control group user are provided a survey to determine the effectiveness of the advertisement.

24. The method of claim 14, wherein the demographic and behavior information associated with the user comprises at least one selected from the group consisting of:

demographic data, behavioral data, and other social data.

25. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

for each of the plurality of users of a social networking system, maintaining a set of connections with other users of the plurality of users,

wherein generating the candidate control group of users of the social networking system comprises comparison of the demographic and behavior information of one of the exposed subset of users to the demographic and behavior information for a selected user who is among the set of connections of the one of the exposed subset of users.

26. A method for building an advertising control group within a social networking system, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users of the social networking system, maintaining demographic and behavior information associated with the user;

maintaining a log of user advertising exposures outside of the social networking system;

determining an exposed subset of users of the social networking system comprising users exposed to an advertisement, the exposed subset of users determined based on the log of user advertising exposures;

generating a candidate control group of users of the social networking system, the candidate control group of users selected by comparison of the demographic and behavior information of selected users of the plurality of users with the demographic and behavior information associated with the exposed subset of users;

eliminating from the candidate control group those of the selected users who have an entry in the log of user advertising exposures indicating that they have been exposed to the advertisement, thereby forming the control group of unexposed users of the social networking system.

27. The method of claim 26, further comprising:

providing a survey to at least one user from the exposed subset of users and at least one user from the control group.

28. The method of claim 26, wherein the selected users are randomly selected from the plurality of users.

29. The method of claim 26, wherein demographic and behavior information associated with the user comprises at least one selected from the group consisting of:

demographic data, behavioral cluster data, and other social data.

30. The method of claim 26, wherein generating the candidate control group of users of the social networking system comprises comparing the demographic and behavior information associated with each user from the exposed subset of users to find a match within the demographic and behavior information of the plurality of users.

31. The method of claim 26, further comprising:

for each of the plurality of users of a social networking system, maintaining a set of connections with other users of the plurality of users;

wherein generating the candidate control group of users of the social networking system comprises comparison of the demographic and behavior information of one of the exposed subset of users to the demographic and behavior information for a selected user who is among the set of connections of the one of the exposed subset of users.

32. The method of claim 26, further comprising:

providing the survey to the at least one exposed user and at least one control group user.

33. The method of claim 26, further comprising:

providing survey result data a provider of the advertisement.

34. A method for measuring advertising effectiveness for advertisements external to a user registration site, the method comprising:

for each of a plurality of users of the user registration site;

maintaining demographic and behavior information associated with the user, and

sending a user registration site cookie to a client device associated with the user of the user registration site;

building a log of user advertising exposures outside of the user registration site by, for each of the plurality of users exposed to an advertisement, creating a log entry indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement; and

building a control group of unexposed users of the user registration site, the control group selected by comparing the demographic and behavior information between selected unexposed users of the plurality of users with at least a subset of the users exposed to the advertisement;

wherein at least one exposed user and at least one control group user are provided a survey to determine the effectiveness of the advertisement.