Location Broker Service for Privacy-Preserving Ad Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Advertisers face challenges in targeting advertising campaigns effectively while respecting users' privacy, particularly in location-based advertising on mobile devices, as existing systems struggle to balance targeted advertising with user privacy concerns.
Innovation Solution
The system employs a location broker service that verifies mobile client locations without disclosing precise information to advertisers, enabling location-targeted ad delivery while maintaining user privacy through the use of location use tokens and generalized data, allowing advertisers to target specific demographics and densities without direct access to sensitive user data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If precise mobile client location information is disclosed to advertisers for targeted advertising, then advertising effectiveness is improved, but user privacy is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a location broker service as an intermediary between mobile clients and advertisers. The broker receives location use tokens from advertisers, verifies them against actual mobile client locations, and delivers ads only when verification succeeds. This mediator enables targeted advertising based on location without exposing precise user location data to advertisers, thus resolving the contradiction between advertising effectiveness and user privacy.
2Loss of information
If location use tokens are verified through a location broker service, then user privacy is protected, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The location broker service acts as a centralized intermediary that handles all verification operations. Instead of implementing complex verification logic in each advertiser's system or each mobile client device, the patent consolidates the verification functionality in a single broker service. This reduces distributed system complexity while maintaining privacy protection through centralized token verification against actual location data.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for controlling ad delivery to mobile clients while maintaining user privacy are herein provided. One exemplary method involves a location broker service. The method includes receiving, at an ad delivery service, a location use token from a mobile client, which may be a single use token. The method includes sending, from the ad delivery service, the location use token to the location broker service for verification at the location broker service. The method includes receiving, at the ad delivery service, the mobile client location from the location broker service based on the verification. The method includes delivering, from the ad delivery service, a location-targeted ad to the mobile client at the mobile client location, where the delivering is further based on a geographic density of a plurality of mobile clients. An advertiser using the ad delivery service may be billed based on location use token history.