Master ID User Identification for Cross-Device Personalization
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Solution Overview
Problem
E-commerce websites face challenges in accurately identifying individual users across multiple devices and accounts, leading to ineffective personalization and potential loss of sales opportunities, as tracking cookies only identify devices and not specific users, complicating user identification in multi-user, multi-device environments.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that utilize an electronic content generation server to track and centralize user interaction information under a master ID, associating tracking cookies, email addresses, and IP addresses to provide personalized content, while applying content usage parameters based on user ID confidence levels to ensure relevant and non-offensive targeting.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If tracking cookies are used to identify users, then device identification is achieved, but user identification accuracy deteriorates because cookies only identify devices not specific users
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a master ID as an intermediary that links multiple tracking cookies, email addresses, and IP addresses to a single user identity. This master ID serves as a mediator between the fragmented device-level identifiers and the target user, enabling accurate user identification across multiple devices without requiring direct user authentication on each device.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges multiple types of user identifiers (tracking cookies from different devices, email addresses, IP addresses) into a unified master ID profile. By combining these fragmented identification data points, the system achieves accurate user identification even when users access the website from multiple devices with different cookies.
2Productivity
If personalization is attempted in multi-user environments, then sales opportunities increase, but errors and offensiveness increase due to incorrect user identification
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms that monitor user interactions and adjust personalization content based on actual user behavior patterns. By continuously analyzing how users interact with personalized content, the system can detect when personalization is going awry and modify subsequent content delivery to prevent errors and offensiveness while maintaining sales conversion potential.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial personalization by providing customized content only when user identification confidence is high, while using more generic content when identification is uncertain. This partial action approach prevents the system from making overly specific (and potentially erroneous) personalization attempts in ambiguous situations, thereby reducing offensiveness while maintaining sales opportunities.
3Measurement precision
If multiple tracking cookies are associated with a single master ID, then user identification accuracy improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The master ID serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a user identifier, a data aggregation key, a personalization target, and a cross-device linkage mechanism. By making the identification system multi-functional, the patent reduces the need for separate complex systems for each function, thereby managing complexity while achieving accurate multi-device user identification.
Data Source
AI summary
Personalized electronic content is generated for display on a user computer. The content is generated by first matching a targeted user online identifier to one of a plurality of user online identifiers associated with a master ID in a database. Using online user behavior associated with the user online identifiers of the master ID, a preliminary set of personalized electronic content is generated. A set of content usage parameters is applied to the preliminary set of personalized electronic content to define the personalized electronic content, which is then transmitted and displayed on a user computer. The personalized electronic content may comprise targeted advertisement utilized to populate a webpage or an email template defined by an online marketing campaign.