Tracking interaction with sponsored and unsponsored content

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10540679-B2
Application number	US-201514945153-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 18, 2015
Priority date	Sep 30, 2015
Publication date	Jan 21, 2020
Grant date	Jan 21, 2020

Abstract

Generally discussed herein are methods, systems, and apparatuses for tracking user interaction with sponsored and/or unsponsored content. A method can include receiving a tracking event packet including data fields comprising a packet identification, a tracking event identifier, a content identifier, a cost, a campaign identifier, and/or an advertiser identifier, determining whether the tracking event packet is a duplicate based on the packet identification, aggregating non-duplicate tracking event packets by advertiser identification such that packets with advertiser identifications that hash to a same value are aggregated together, and transferring aggregated tracking event packets to a first database and a second database, the first database includes data stored for analytics and the second database includes data stored for billing and campaign performance monitoring.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations for tracking user interaction with content of a website, the operations comprising:
receiving a tracking event packet including data fields comprising a packet identification that uniquely indicates the tracking event packet, a tracking event identifier uniquely indicating a specific instance of the user interaction with the content, a content identifier uniquely indicating content with which the user interacted, a cost associated with the user interaction, a campaign identifier uniquely indicating a campaign with which the content is associated, and an advertiser identification uniquely indicating an advertiser that initiated the campaign;
determining whether the tracking event packet is a duplicate based on the packet identification and marking the packet as invalid if the tracking event packet is determined to be a duplicate;
hashing, by a databus consumer, the advertiser identification;
aggregating, by the databus consumer dedicated to serving and performing operations on data from packets with advertiser identifications that hash to a same value, non-duplicate tracking event packets by advertiser identification such that packets with advertiser identifications that hash to the same value are aggregated together;
determining, by the databus consumer and based on the data from the packets with advertiser identifications that hash to a same value, budget and performance related metrics of the campaign;
determining whether the tracking event packet corresponds to a revenue generating tracking event,
transferring, by the databus consumer, the budget and performance related metrics to a first database and a second database, the first database includes data stored for analytics and the second database includes data stored for billing and campaign performance monitoring;
transferring, by the databus consumer, aggregated tracking event packets to the first database and the second database sooner subsequent to the aggregation if it is determined that the aggregated event packets include a tracking event packet corresponding to a revenue generating tracking event than if the aggregated event packets do not include a tracking event packet corresponding to a revenue generating tracking event; and
presenting analytics information using data from the transferred aggregated tracking event packets and the budget and performance related metrics on the first database or providing a bill to the advertiser using data from the transferred aggregated tracking event packets on the second database.

2. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions for determining whether the tracking event packet is a duplicate include instructions for performing an increment operation on an entry in a third database, the entry associated with the packet identification, comparing a value returned from performing the increment operation to a specified duplicate value, and determining the tracking event packet is a duplicate if the value returned is greater than the specified duplicate value.

3. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
updating an advertisement stats table, a campaign stats table, and an account stats table by writing, in a single write request to the second database, an increment to an entry in the advertisement stats table based on the content identification, an entry in the creative stats table based on the campaign identification, and an entry in the account stats table based on the advertiser identification.

4. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
updating a daily campaign stats table, a monthly campaign stats table, and a lifetime campaign stats table by writing, in a single write request to the second database, an increment to an entry in the daily campaign stats table based on the campaign identification, an entry in the monthly campaign stats table based on the campaign identification, and an entry in the lifetime campaign stats table based on the campaign identification.

5. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
determining a campaign-level click through rate, an urgency for serving ads of the campaign, and an impressions or clicks per day of the campaign based on the received tracking event packet, wherein the urgency is based upon a value of a number of impressions or click events per unit time, on average, that are required to satisfy the campaign.

6. The machine-readable medium of claim 5 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
comparing the determined campaign-level urgency to a specified urgency threshold and, in response to determining the urgency is greater than the specified urgency threshold, removing content from the campaign that is performing worse than other content of the campaign.

7. The machine-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the instructions for removing content form the campaign that is performing worse than other content of the campaign include instructions for:
determining a content-level click through rate and a content-level impressions or clicks per day for each content of the campaign;
comparing the content-level click through rate and the content-level impressions or clicks per day to the campaign-level click through rate and at least one of campaign-level impressions per day and campaign-level clicks per day, respectively; and
removing content from the campaign in response to determining, based on the comparison, that the content-level click through rate and the content-level impressions or clicks per day is less than the campaign-level click through rate and the campaign-level impressions or clicks per day, respectively.

8. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
comparing a cost value in the cost field of the tracking event packet to a daily campaign budget; and setting a status field in the tracking event packet to indicate that the campaign is inactive in response to determining that the cost value is greater than or equal to the daily campaign budget.

9. The machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions for receiving the tracking event packet from the front end tracking client include receiving only packets that include an advertiser identification value of a number of advertiser identification values that hash to a value associated with a partition of the medium.

10. A method for tracking user interaction with content of a website, the method comprising operations performed using one or more hardware processors, the operations comprising:
receiving a tracking event packet including data fields comprising a packet identification that uniquely indicates the tracking event packet, a tracking event identifier uniquely indicating a specific instance of the user interaction with the content, a content identifier uniquely indicating content with which the user interacted, a cost associated with the user interaction, a campaign identifier uniquely indicating a campaign with which the content is associated, and an advertiser identification uniquely indicating an advertiser that initiated the campaign;
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Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Liu Qi
• Wei Yawen
• Pei Lihong
• Bati Hardik N
• Dubey Sanjay Sureshchandra
• Poon Waitat Peter
• Yu Xiang
• Wu Edward

Classifications

• G06Q30/0273

  Determination of fees for advertising · CPC title

• G06Q30/0277

  Online advertisement · CPC title

• G06Q30/0246 Primary

  Traffic · CPC title

• H04L67/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L67/535

  Tracking the activity of the user (network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34) · CPC title