Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120166520 | Determining Advertising Effectiveness Outside of a Social Networking System - A social networking system or other user registration site builds a log of exposures by users to advertisements outside of the user registration site to determine their effectiveness. For each user exposed to an advertisement, a log entry is created indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement. Tracking pixels are embedded into advertisements that, when accessed, enable the social networking system or user registration site to log access to the advertisement by the user. From the log files, the user registration site identifies exposed users and selects unexposed users with similar demographics and/or behavior information to generate a control group. The two groups can be surveyed about the advertisement to determine its effectiveness. The user exposure information also can be used to retarget advertisements, to measure advertising effectiveness on connections of exposed users, and to measure actions of exposed users. | 06-28-2012 |
20130024879 | Measuring Television Advertisement Exposure Rate and Effectiveness - In one embodiment, a social networking system models a number of exposures to an advertisement for a concept for a set of users, sample from the set of users attitudinal data toward the concept, and determine effectiveness of the advertisement by evaluating the attitudinal data against the number of exposures to the advertisement. | 01-24-2013 |
20130086169 | PROVIDING USER METRICS FOR AN UNKNOWN DIMENSION TO AN EXTERNAL SYSTEM - A social networking system may provide user metrics for unknown dimensions to an external system using received hash codes from user devices performing actions on the external system. Embodiments of the invention receive hash codes generated by external systems that are embedded in redirect Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that are executed by user devices. The social networking system may match the received hash codes to identifying information about users, e.g., user identifiers. The user profile information may be reported to external systems based on hash codes in an aggregated format without disclosing identifying information about users. In one embodiment, a hash code may include identifying information of an administrator of an external system to enable the administrator to merge information about users of the social networking system with other unknown dimensions of information about the users that is known by the external system. | 04-04-2013 |
20130151311 | PREDICTION OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR DATA SETS USING PANEL DATA - Embodiments of the invention combine information from different data sets, such as social networks, vendor systems, and/or panels, each data set comprising statistics about past consumer behavior (e.g., product purchases). The result of the combination is a model that, when applied to statistics about purchases of a particular product, produces predicted consumer behavior statistics about the particular product that are more accurate than the data of any given one of the different data sets when taken in isolation. | 06-13-2013 |
20130151527 | ASSIGNING SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM USERS TO HOUSEHOLDS - Users of a social networking system are assigned to households using prediction models that rely, in part, on user profile information and social graph data. Information about users may be received by a social networking system through various channels (e.g., declared/profile information, user history, IP addresses, Global Positioning System (GPS) data from check-in events and/or continuously provided by mobile devices, external household information, and/or social information). Scoring models may use statistical analysis of the received user information to predict household membership for users. User attributes, such as previous names, date of birth, social graph data, locations, life events, and check-ins, may be factors in generating confidence scores of predicted household memberships. Weighted scoring models may use machine learning methods for measuring the accuracy of the household membership prediction. The social networking system may use a machine learning algorithm to analyze user information to determine confidence scores for matching potential households. | 06-13-2013 |
20130166639 | Tagging Posted Content in a Social Networking System with Media Information - A social networking system allows a user to insert media information into content posted by the user, where the media information identifies a media item that the user is consuming while composing the posted content. When a user of a social networking system composes content via a composer interface, the user may select an option on the composer interface to record audio using a microphone on the user's device. A media item is identified from the recorded audio and information about the identified media item is added to the user's posted content. The system may also update information about the identified media item and the composing user. | 06-27-2013 |
20130204710 | SEQUENCING DISPLAY ITEMS IN A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM - In one embodiment, the social networking selects a display item to display to a viewing user based on information about the viewing user and a display sequence tree associated with an ad campaign. The display items include advertisements, sponsored stories, and content objects created by users. The information about the user includes the viewing user's interactions, the viewing user's demographic information, and the viewing user's inferred characteristics. A display sequence tree associated with an ad campaign is a hierarchical arrangement of nodes that correspond to display items and represent possible sequences of display items. An ad campaign includes at least one request for a display item. | 08-08-2013 |
20130218666 | SELECTING WHISPER CODES TO PRESENT WITH OFFERS - A social networking system captures performance metrics of an offer by selecting a whisper code to include in an offer when presenting the offer to users of the social networking system. The social networking system receives information for providing its users with an offer for redemption at a merchant establishment. The social networking system also receives a set of rules for selecting a whisper code to go with the offer. The rules may be based on any context for which the advertiser or merchant may want to track performance of the offer. When presenting the offer, the social networking system selects a whisper code using those rules. This tracking using different whisper codes enables the merchant to understand the performance of the offer campaign based on the context in which the social networking system presents the offers to its users. | 08-22-2013 |
20130238421 | Combination of Social Networking Data with Other Data Sets for Estimation of Viewership Statistics - Embodiments of the invention combine information from different data sets, such as social networks, advertising networks, and/or panels, each data set comprising statistics about past viewership of content (e.g., advertisements). The result of the combination is a model that, when applied to statistics about viewing of particular content, produces viewing statistics about the particular content that are more accurate than the data of any given one of the different data sets when taken in isolation. | 09-12-2013 |
20130344468 | Obtaining Structured Data From Freeform Textual Answers in a Research Poll - A research polling system obtains structured data from freeform text answers in a research poll. The system includes a database of objects that may represent answers to a research poll. The system presents a research poll to a user, where the research poll includes at least one freeform text field among the answers in the poll. A user answering the poll provides a partial user input to a research poll question in the text field. In response, the system searches for objects in the database that match the user's input, and optionally also based on the question. If one or more matching objects are found, the system presents the matching objects in a listing interface, from which the user may select an object for the answer to the poll question. | 12-26-2013 |
20130346213 | Brand Promotion in a Social Networking System - A social networking system enables brands to form relationships with each other and use these relationships when communicating content to social networking system users. The social networking system receives an endorsement request from a brand to establish a relationship with another brand in the social networking system. Responsive to an approval from the other brand, the relationship is formed by the social networking system, and may be used to distribute content to users connected to one of the brands. For example, a brand may endorse an advertising brand, allowing the advertising brand to target the endorsement to users connected to the endorsing brand. The advertising brand may provide content, such as an advertisement, as well as the endorsement. | 12-26-2013 |
20140067945 | Sharing Television and Video Programming Through Social Networking - In particular embodiments a social networking system captures data associated with video content provided to a first user of a social-networking system, identifies, using the captured data, the video content provided to the first user, and updates a graph of the social-networking system to associate the first user with the identified video content. The graph of the social-networking system has a plurality of nodes and edges connecting the nodes. The nodes of the graph include user nodes that are each associated with a particular user of the social-networking system. | 03-06-2014 |
20140067946 | Sharing Television and Video Programming Through Social Networking - In particular embodiments, a social networking system queries a social graph of the social-networking system for social content associated with video content provided to one or more users of the social-networking system and accesses privacy settings associated with each of the one or more users. The privacy settings indicate whether a particular user has authorized the social-networking system to share social content associated with the particular user with one or more third parties. The social networking system provides the social content associated with video content provided to the one or more users to a particular third party if the privacy settings of the one or more users indicate that the one or more users have authorized the social-networking system to share the social content with one or more third parties. | 03-06-2014 |
20140114745 | Determining Advertising Effectiveness Based on Observed Actions in a Social Networking System - Actions and/or behaviors of social networking system users are observed and used for measuring advertising effectiveness. More specifically, advertisements from an advertising campaign are selectively targeted and presented to specific subsets of social network users and withheld from other subsets of social network users. After the advertisements are presented, actions performed by users in the different subsets are be identified and analyzed to determine metrics describing the effectiveness of the particular advertising campaign. | 04-24-2014 |
20140114748 | Determining Advertising Effectiveness Bases on a Pseudo-Control Group - Actions and/or behaviors of social networking system users are observed and used for measuring advertising effectiveness. More specifically, advertisements from an advertising campaign are selectively targeted and presented to specific subsets of social network users and withheld from other subsets of social network users. After the advertisements are presented, actions performed by users in the different subsets are be identified and analyzed to determine metrics describing the effectiveness of the particular advertising campaign. In one aspect, the metrics are based on a pseudo-control group. | 04-24-2014 |
20140129321 | Combination of Social Networking Data with Other Data Sets for Estimation of Viewership Statistics - Embodiments of the invention combine information from different data sets, such as social networks, advertising networks, and/or panels, each data set comprising statistics about past viewership of content (e.g., advertisements). The result of the combination is a model that, when applied to statistics about viewing of particular content, produces viewing statistics about the particular content that are more accurate than the data of any given one of the different data sets when taken in isolation. | 05-08-2014 |
20140156387 | Generating Advertising Metrics Using Location Information - A social networking system generates advertising metrics based on location information. Advertisers provide the social networking system with location information identifying geographic locations of physical sites and/or offline advertisements. Location information received by the social networking system for its users is compared to the location information provided by the advertiser to identify users visiting a physical site or exposed to an offline advertisement. Hence, user visitations to physical sites may be identified and analyzed in order to generate conversion metrics. User exposures to offline advertisements may also be identified and analyzed in order to generate exposure metrics. | 06-05-2014 |
20140172541 | Generating Metrics Based on Client Device Ownership - A social networking system generates metrics for one or more advertisements based on client device ownership. Social networking system users are identified as owners of client devices. For example, a social networking system user is identified as owning a client device if the user's user account was accessed using a native software application or a web browsing application associated with the client device. Exposures to one or more advertisements by the identified owners are determined and used to generate advertising metrics with respect to the client devices owned by the owners. The metrics may be segmented or organized based on various client device types. | 06-19-2014 |
20140222549 | Measuring Television Advertisement Exposure Rate and Effectiveness - In one embodiment, a social networking system models a number of exposures to an advertisement for a concept for a set of users, sample from the set of users attitudinal data toward the concept, and determine effectiveness of the advertisement by evaluating the attitudinal data against the number of exposures to the advertisement. | 08-07-2014 |
20140222583 | DETERMINING VALUES FOR A CHARACTERISTIC OF AN ONLINE SYSTEM USER BASED ON A REFERENCE GROUP OF USERS - An online system predicts values of a target characteristic for users in a set of users based on a reference set of users having known values for the target characteristic. Using descriptive characteristics of users in the reference set of users and target characteristic values for users in the reference set, the online system generates a model predicting values of the target characteristic based on user descriptive characteristics. The online system applies a global constraint on the target characteristic when generating the model, so the model extrapolates from the reference data while achieving aggregate results for values of the target characteristic that are consistent with the global constraint. The global constraint may be obtained from census data or another suitable global aggregate survey. Using the global constraint in the model avoids inaccuracies in reporting of user metrics. | 08-07-2014 |
20140297404 | Obtaining Metrics for Online Advertising Using Multiple Sources of User Data - A system for obtaining metrics for online advertising uses multiple sources of user data, including panel data, social networking system data, and user data from other online service providers. To avoid data leakage that could occur if the different providers were to share their user data, an advertising server accesses user data from the various sources and applies rules for obtaining the advertising metrics from the various user data sources. The rules may determine what data to use when there are conflicts between the different sources. Derived data may also be used to provide an indication of underlying demographics data without revealing personal information from the data source. | 10-02-2014 |
20150039524 | Detecting And Responding To Sentiment-Based Communications About A Business On A Social Networking System - A social networking system identifies communications about an object associated with a brand owner. For each communication, the social networking system identifies users who were generated the communication, users who were exposed to the communication, and users who were not exposed to the communication. The social networking system determines a sentiment associated with a communication and may send a report based on the sentiment of the communications towards the brand owner. A request from a brand owner to present one or more response communications to users based on the users' relationship to a communication from a user about the object and the sentiment determined from the communication may be received by the social networking system. Based on the request, the social networking system presents a response communication to one or more users. | 02-05-2015 |