Shared Device Graph for Cross-Device User Identification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems lack the capability to effectively identify users across multiple devices, as most access providers do not have the scale or technical ability to recognize significant user groupings from their data, despite the importance of this functionality in various industries.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system for building a shared device graph by mapping unique device identifiers to platform-wide identifiers, creating a network of connected device nodes, and retrieving user information from multiple data sources to establish relationships and permissions for access, allowing for cooperative device identification.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If access providers use traditional device identification methods, then they can identify users on individual devices, but they cannot recognize significant user groupings across multiple devices due to lack of scale and technical ability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines device identifiers, user identifiers, and relationship data from multiple sources into a unified device graph structure. This merging enables cross-device user identification by integrating scattered data points into a coherent network that reveals user groupings across devices, directly resolving the inability to recognize user groupings while maintaining manageable complexity through standardized graph operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The device graph acts as an intermediary layer between raw identifier data and user identification results. By introducing this intermediate data structure that stores and relationships between devices and users, the system can efficiently query and analyze cross-device patterns without requiring complex processing of raw data from multiple sources, thus improving identification accuracy while controlling system complexity.
2Loss of information
If access providers collect data from multiple sources to identify users across devices, then they can build comprehensive user profiles, but they face challenges in data integration and relationship mapping
Solution Approach 1:
The device graph structure serves multiple functions simultaneously: it stores device identifiers, user identifiers, relationships between them, and enables various types of queries (direct lookups, relationship traversals, pattern matching). This multi-functionality allows comprehensive user information aggregation while avoiding the need for separate systems for each data integration task, thus reducing overall integration complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments user identification data into discrete graph nodes (devices, users) and edges (relationships), allowing independent management and processing of different data types. This segmentation enables systematic data integration from multiple sources by treating each source's data as modular units that can be independently validated, transformed, and inserted into the graph, reducing the complexity of holistic data integration.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for building a device graph for cooperative device identification are disclosed. Various information is received at a computing system over a communications network, include information defining a relationship between (i) a unique identifier associated with a first device of a user and (ii) a unique identifier associated with the user, and information defining a relationship between (i) a unique identifier associated with a second device of the user and (ii) the unique identifier associated with the user. The unique identifiers associated with the devices are each mapped to the platform-wide identifier based at least in part on the unique user identifier. A device graph comprising a plurality of device nodes is constructed, with related device nodes connected by one or more edges. Nodes representing the devices are linked based on a relationship identified between them using the platform-wide identifier.