Nested iFrame Architecture for Secure Targeted Content Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for providing targeted electronic content, such as advertising, expose proprietary targeting information to unauthorized third parties, allowing them to track user behavior and intercept referral URLs, leading to privacy concerns and potential loss of advertising revenue for content providers.
Innovation Solution
The use of nested iFrames and shadow domains to protect targeting information, where a 'friendly' iFrame resides in the same domain as the parent page, allowing communication and caching of content selection parameters, while a shadow domain handles ad requests, ensuring that only the shadow domain or first iFrame sees the referrer information, not the original content provider.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If targeted content is provided using third-party advertising entities, then advertising relevance to users is improved, but proprietary targeting information is exposed to unauthorized third parties
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the advertising delivery system into multiple independent domains: the content provider domain, an intermediate domain, and the advertising entity domain. Each domain performs a specific function - the content provider sends requests, the intermediate domain receives and processes them without exposing internal structure, and the advertising entity delivers ads. This segmentation allows advertising relevance to be maintained while protecting proprietary information through architectural isolation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediate domain that acts as a mediator between the content provider and the advertising entity. This intermediary receives requests from the content provider, processes them without exposing the content provider's internal targeting information, and communicates with the advertising entity. The intermediary protects proprietary information by never revealing the content provider's domain structure or internal data formats to external advertising entities.
2Measurement precision
If referral URLs are shared with advertising entities, then ad targeting accuracy is improved, but user privacy and security are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the referral URL information from the content provider's domain and processes it in isolation within the intermediate domain. The intermediate domain receives the URL, extracts necessary targeting parameters, and uses only those extracted parameters when communicating with the advertising entity. This extraction process separates sensitive URL information from the advertising communication, maintaining targeting accuracy while protecting user privacy by not exposing the complete referral URL structure.
3Productivity
If third parties intercept targeting information, then advertising revenue for content providers is reduced, but the ability to track user behavior is improved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by making each domain in the system have specialized, non-overlapping functions with specific access rights. The content provider domain has authority over ad selection criteria, the intermediate domain has authority over request processing, and the advertising entity has authority over ad delivery. This localized quality of authority and information access prevents unauthorized third parties from intercepting targeting information while maintaining efficient user tracking for legitimate advertising purposes.
Data Source
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Figure 3(a)~3(b)
AI summary
Third parties are prevented from obtaining proprietary information that a content provider might not want to expose. Targeting data used to enable a selection service to select targeted or supplemental content can be passed as an anchor in a uniform resource locator or stored in a parent file for a page. A second file can reside in an inline frame (iFrarae) on the page that is able to pull the targeting data from the parent page, if in the same domain, or parse the parameters from the data in the anchor. The targeting data can be submitted to a selection service, which can return parameters specifying content or a type of supplemental content to be displayed. The request submitted to a supplemental content provider can come from a nested iFrame in a separate domain, such that the targeting data or source of the parent file cannot be obtained through the nested iFrame.