Browser Script Timer for Accurate Third-Party Interaction Measurement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional technologies for monitoring user interactions with third-party links and external domains are unreliable due to potential under-reporting by third-party providers and require significant effort and resources, with timing discrepancies across servers leading to inaccurate measurements of user time spent on external domains.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a script on the user's browser to measure time spent away from the online services system's domain by starting a timer when navigating to a third party page and stopping it when returning, allowing for accurate duration calculation and reporting to the online services system, thereby avoiding synchronization issues across multiple servers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If third party content providers provide tracking and reporting, then user interaction data can be collected, but reliability of information deteriorates due to potential under-reporting by third parties
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary tracking mechanism embedded in the online service provider's domain that mediates between the user's browser and the third party content. This intermediary script captures navigation events and time spent on external domains, providing reliable data without requiring third parties to self-report, thus resolving the reliability issue while maintaining information collection.
2Measurement precision
If third party content providers provide the tracking platform, then user access can be monitored, but effort and resources required increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The tracking system is designed to be self-service for the third party content providers. The online service provider's domain provides the tracking infrastructure and script automatically, eliminating the need for third parties to build and maintain their own tracking platforms. This reduces effort and resources while maintaining precise monitoring capabilities.
3Loss of information
If multiple servers perform timing measurements, then user interaction can be tracked across domains, but measurement accuracy deteriorates due to timing synchronization issues
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the timing measurement function from the server environment and places it directly in the user's browser through embedded script code. This eliminates the need for server timing and avoids synchronization issues between multiple servers, as the timing is performed locally in the user's browser where it can accurately measure time spent on external domains without relying on server clock synchronization.
Data Source
AI summary
An online services system provides monitoring of user interaction with third-party content. The monitoring is performed by a script in a web page provided by the online services system, which script provides a timer invoked when the browser leaves the online services system's page for a page comprising third party content. When the online services system serves the page, the browser reads the HTML to render the page, including the script with the timer. When the user leaves the online services system page, the timer begins, and when the browser returns to a page provided by the online services system, the timer ends and duration information from the timer is provided to the online services system. Applications include measurement of the quality of interaction between users and a third party advertisers, in which time spent viewing third party content is a proxy for the quality of the interaction.