Systems and methods of tracking locations visited by mobile devices to quantify a change from a time series of responses

• US 9,986,527 B2
• Filed: 02/16/2017
• Issued: 05/29/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/07/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: InMarket Media, LLC
• Original Assignee: NinthDecimal, Inc. (InMarket Media, LLC)
• Inventors: D'Alberto, Paolo, Milenkiy, Veronica, Azizi, Ahmad Fairiz
• Primary Examiner(s): Afshar, Kamran
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kim, Minjung
• Application Number:
  US15/435,287
• Publication Number:
  US 20170353941A1
• Time in Patent Office: 467 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/42 Determining position
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/0018 Transmission from mobile station to base station
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/0278 involving statistical or probabilistic considerations G01S5/0252, G01S5/0294 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/003 locating network equipment
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/006 with additional information processing, e.g. for direction or speed determination

Abstract

Systems and methods including mobile devices determining their locations using location determination units, such as GPS receivers. A computing device generates a statistical measurement of location pattern changes in relation to a predetermined region for a predetermined period of time. The measurement is generated from a difference between the average response of exposed mobile devices and the average response of non-exposed mobile devices, where each response of a mobile device is computed by: determining a sequence of time instances of the mobile devices being at locations within the region, generating a time series of visitation measurements from the time sequence, applying at a time instance an anti-symmetric weight function having an exponential distribution to the time series to generate the response corresponding to the time instance, and summing the responses corresponding to time instances falling within the predetermined period of time as the response of the mobile device.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a plurality of mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the plurality of mobile devices determines locations of the mobile device at respective time instances when the mobile device is at the respective locations; and

a computing device in communication with the mobile devices to receive locations of the mobile devices at different time instances,

wherein the computing device;

receives information identifying a time period during which at least one message related to a predetermined region is transmitted to a portion of the mobile devices at least once;

identifies a first subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the first subset receives the message at least once during the time period;

identifies a second subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the second subset does not receive the message during the time period;

for each respective mobile device in the first subset and the second subset;

determines whether or not each location, in a plurality of locations of the respective mobile device at a plurality of time instances respectively, is located within the predetermined region;

converts the plurality of locations of the respective mobile device into a time series of measurements of visitation of the respective mobile device to the predetermined region for a plurality of time intervals corresponding to the time series;

computes a plurality of responses at a plurality of time instances during the time period by applying a weight function to the time series of the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region; and

sums the plurality of responses at the plurality of time instances as a summed response of the respective mobile device; and

determines a measurement of a location behavior change based on a difference between;

an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the first subset, and an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the second subset.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device converts the plurality of locations of the respective mobile device into the time series of measurements of visitation to the predetermined region by counting multiple locations of the respective device located within the predetermined region and within a predetermined time period as one visit to the predetermined region.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein each of the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region in the time series is based on a count of visits to the predetermined region within a respective time interval of the plurality of time intervals.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region are counts of visits normalized to have values that are within a predetermined range.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein each measurement, in the time series of measurements of visitation to the predetermined region, computed for are a respective time interval of the plurality of time intervals, is proportional to a count of visits of the respective mobile device to the predetermined region during the respective time interval.

6. The system of claim 2,

wherein each respective time interval of the plurality of time intervals has a plurality of time segments of a predetermined length;

and

each measurement, in the time series of measurements of visitation to the predetermined region, computed for the respective time interval is proportional to a count of time segments, in the respective time interval, during which the respective mobile device has a location that is located within the predetermined region.

7. The system of claim 2, wherein each measurement, in the time series of measurements of visitation to the predetermined region, computed for respective time interval of the plurality of time intervals is proportional to a count of clusters of locations of the respective mobile device in the respective time interval.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the clusters are at least a predetermined time duration apart in time.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the computing device performs a statistical cluster analysis of locations of the respective mobile device to identify the clusters.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein applying the weight function to the time series of the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region includes computing, for each respective time instance in the plurality of time instances, a weighted average of a subset of the time series of the measurements according to the weight function.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein a subset of the time series of the measurements includes a number of first measurements for time intervals that are within a predetermined time length before the respective time instance and the same number of second measurements for time intervals that are within the predetermined time length after the respective time instance.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein weights for the first measurements and weights for the second measurements are computed from the weight function based on elapsed times between the respective time instance and time intervals of respective ones of the first measurements and the second measurements.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein a weight computed from the weight function decreases exponentially as an elapsed time used in the weight function increases.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein weights computed from the weight function based a first elapsed time before the respective time instance and a second elapsed time after the respective time instance are an equal in magnitude but have opposite signs, when the first elapsed time and the second elapsed time are equal in length.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein to determine whether or not a location having a set of coordinates, in the plurality of locations of the respective mobile device, is located within the predetermined region, the computing device:

combines the coordinates into an identifier of a cell among the plurality of cells in the grid reference system, wherein the cell contains the respective location on the surface of the Earth; and

searches a set of cell identifiers pre-associated with the predetermined region to identify a match;

wherein the location having the set of coordinates is determined to be within the predetermined region in response to the match being found in the set of cell identifiers pre-associated with the predetermined region; and

wherein the location having the set of coordinates is determined to be not within the predetermined region in response to the match not being found in the set of cell identifiers pre-associated with the predetermined region.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the coordinates are combined to provide the identifier of the cell according to a predetermined function of the coordinates of the respective location.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the coordinates are combined by:

generating two integers from the coordinates according to a precision level; and

combining the two integers to provide the identifier of the cell.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the coordinates are combined by:

selecting digits from the coordinates in accordance with a cell resolution level; and

combining the digits selected from the coordinates into an integer representing the identifier of the cell.

19. A method implemented in a computing device, the method comprising:

receiving, in the computing device, locations of mobile devices at different time instances;

receiving information identifying a time period during which at least one message related to a predetermined region is transmitted to a portion of the mobile devices at least once;

identifying a first subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the first subset receives the message at least once during the time period;

identifying a second subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the second subset does not receive the message during the time period;

for each respective mobile device in the first subset and the second subset;

determining whether or not each location, in a plurality of locations of the respective mobile device at a plurality of time instances respectively, is located within the predetermined region;

converting the plurality of locations of the respective mobile device into a time series of measurements of visitation of the respective mobile device to the predetermined region for a plurality of time intervals corresponding to the time series;

computing a plurality of responses at a plurality of time instances during the time period by applying a weight function to the time series of the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region; and

summing the plurality of responses at the plurality of time instances as a summed response of the respective mobile device; and

determining a measurement of a location behavior change based on a difference between;

an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the first subset, and an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the second subset.

20. A non-transitory computer storage medium storing instructions which when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method, the method comprising:

receiving, in the computing device, locations of mobile devices at different time instances;

receiving information identifying a time period during which at least one message related to a predetermined region is transmitted to a portion of the mobile devices at least once;

identifying a first subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the first subset receives the message at least once during the time period;

identifying a second subset of the mobile devices, wherein each mobile device in the second subset does not receive the message during the time period;

for each respective mobile device in the first subset and the second subset;

determining whether or not each location, in a plurality of locations of the respective mobile device at a plurality of time instances respectively, is located within the predetermined region;

converting the plurality of locations of the respective mobile device into a time series of measurements of visitation of the respective mobile device to the predetermined region for a plurality of time intervals corresponding to the time series;

computing a plurality of responses at a plurality of time instances during the time period by applying a weight function to the time series of the measurements of visitation to the predetermined region; and

summing the plurality of responses at the plurality of time instances as a the summed response of the respective mobile device; and

determining a measurement of a location behavior change based on a difference between;

an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the first subset, and an average of the summed responses of mobile devices in the second subset.