Hashing Modules for Privacy-Preserving Ad Targeting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Advertisers face challenges in targeting specific users across multiple devices without exposing their personally identifiable information (PII) to ad publishers, as traditional methods like cookies are inaccurate and invasive, violating user privacy and legal regulations.
Innovation Solution
A system using hashing modules to create secure identifier hashes for users, allowing advertisers to target ads without sharing PII, where ad publishers use equivalent hashing to match user requests and serve relevant ads based on these hashes, ensuring privacy protection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If advertisers use cookies stored on user devices to target advertising, then advertising can be delivered to users, but targeting accuracy deteriorates when users switch between multiple devices
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces device-independent identifiers as an intermediary that bridges the gap between user identity and multiple devices. Instead of relying on device-specific cookies, the system uses persistent user identifiers that remain consistent across different devices, allowing accurate user identification without being tied to any single device.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the user identification system from device identification. By separating user identity (represented by device-independent identifiers) from device characteristics (cookies stored on specific devices), the system enables accurate user targeting regardless of which device the user is currently using.
2Measurement precision
If advertisers directly send user information to ad publishers to enable accurate targeting, then user identification accuracy improves, but user privacy deteriorates due to exposure of personally identifiable information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates anonymized copies of user identifiers through hashing. Instead of sharing actual personally identifiable information, the system generates hash values that uniquely identify users without revealing their identity. These hashed identifiers can be shared with ad publishers for accurate targeting while maintaining user privacy protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms user identifiers from their original form (personally identifiable information) into a different parameter form (hashed values). This parameter transformation maintains the unique identification capability while removing the privacy-sensitive characteristics of the original data, allowing safe sharing with ad publishers.
3Ease of operation
If traditional cookie-based targeting is used, then implementation simplicity is maintained, but targeting effectiveness deteriorates across multiple devices
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal identification system that works across multiple devices and platforms. The device-independent identifiers serve multiple functions: user identification, cross-device tracking, and privacy protection, replacing the limited cookie-based system that only worked on single devices.
Data Source
AI summary
A system environment supporting one or more advertisers and one or more ad publishers provides a means of sharing user-targeted advertisement. One or more hashing modules in the system environment provide the advertisers and ad publishers a means of sharing this information without revealing a user's personally identifiable information (PII). If a lossy hash is chosen, then an advertiser can communicate targeted advertisements to an ad publisher without revealing any PII to the ad publisher that the ad publisher did not already know.