Cross-Device User Profiling via Device-Agnostic Identifiers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing technologies face challenges in building unified user profiles across devices and channels, as user data is fragmented and not easily accessible for effective advertising, while preserving privacy remains a concern.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses device and media-agnostic identifiers to link user data from various sources, integrating data across devices and channels, and employing deterministic or probabilistic rules to create a unified user profile for targeted and retargeted advertising, while ensuring privacy through anonymous data handling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If user data is collected from multiple devices and sources to build unified user profiles, then advertising targeting accuracy is improved, but user privacy protection deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces device-agnostic identifiers as intermediary elements that mediate between device-specific identifiers and user profiles. These identifiers enable cross-device tracking and unified user profiling without directly exposing sensitive user information, thus maintaining advertising accuracy while protecting privacy through an intermediate layer of abstraction
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and separates personally identifiable information from the user profiling process by using device-agnostic identifiers that do not contain direct user identification data. This extraction of sensitive information allows the system to maintain user profiles for advertising purposes while removing the harmful element of direct privacy exposure
2Loss of information
If device-specific identifiers are used to track users across devices, then user profile completeness is improved, but data fragmentation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates device-agnostic identifiers that serve multiple functions: they can identify users across different devices, maintain privacy by not exposing direct user information, and simplify data integration by providing a universal identifier format. This single identifier type performs the work of multiple device-specific identifiers while reducing overall system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges data from multiple device-specific sources by using device-agnostic identifiers as a unifying key. Instead of maintaining separate data structures for each device identifier type, the system combines all user data around the universal device-agnostic identifier, simplifying the integration of fragmented data sources
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for an audience of network devices. One of the methods includes receiving information from a source, the information associated with a device identifier. The method includes determining, based on the device identifier, a unique user identifier, wherein the unique user identifier identifies a user independent of network, media, and location. The method includes identifying at least one user attribute based on the received information. The method includes associating the user attribute with the unique user identifier. The method also includes storing the user attribute in a repository. The repository stores a plurality of other user attributes associated with the unique user identifier, the other stored user attributes being received from a plurality of different sources.