Cross-channel user tracking systems, methods and devices
In part, the invention relates to systems and methods suitable for operating a client side platform for deterministically correlating a unique mobile user across multiple marketing communication channels using a universal identifier to provide a deterministic mapping of individual channel user identifiers. In an embodiment, the invention relates to systems and methods suitable for operating a client side platform for probabilistically correlating a unique mobile user across multiple marketing communication channels to provide a mapping of individual channel user identifiers. The systems and methods can be used to identify user activity across different marketing communication channels accessed with a given mobile device.
1. A computer-based method of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:
generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;
generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;
storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;
correlating, using an application installed on the mobile device, the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile;
associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels such that a user can be tracked, wherein the user profile is generated using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifiers, wherein the mobile device channel specific identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers; and
directing ads to a user identified by the universal identifier, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel are communication channels of an advertising campaign.
2. The computer-based method of claim 1 further comprising generating a third non-universal user identifier associated with a third communication channel in response to a third action of the mobile device.
3. The computer-based method of claim 2 wherein the first, second, and third communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, interacting with social applications, and downloading an application.
4. The computer-based method of claim 1 wherein associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions is performed using a computing device running a Bayesian network to perform probabilistic user matching.
5. The computer-based method of claim 1 further comprising comparing one or more user profiles to incoming request profiles using a probabilistic Bayesian network running on computing device.
6. A computer-based system of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:
one or more receivers, executing on a computing device, the one or more receivers configured to collect information from the plurality of communication channels;
a user ID generator configured to provide non-universal user identifiers that can be matched to a universal user identifier;
a data repository comprising a plurality of non-universal user identifiers, each non-universal user identifier associated with one communication channel of the plurality of communication channels, wherein the plurality of non-universal user identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers, wherein a first communication channel and a second communication channel of the plurality of communication channels are communication channels of an advertising campaign; and
a federation server configured to receive user actions associated with the first and the second communication channels from a mobile device client application,
generate a universal identifier using the received user actions and the plurality of non-universal user identifiers,
associate a user profile with the universal identifier using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifiers, and
associate the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across a plurality of communication channels such that a user can be tracked, wherein the mobile device channel specific identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers.
7. The system of claim 6 further comprising a compact uniform resource locator (URL) software module configured to compact a mobile web URL accessed by the mobile device and generate a non-universal user identifier associated with the compacted mobile URL.
8. The system of claim 6 wherein the communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, and downloading an application.
9. The system of claim 6 further comprising a privacy software module configured to enable the user to opt out of being tracked using a universal identifier.
10. The system of claim 6 further comprising a privacy software module.
11. A computer program product residing on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having a plurality of instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations for tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels, the operations comprising:
generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;
generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;
storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;
correlating, using an application installed on the mobile device, the stored first nonuniversal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile;
associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels such that a user can be tracked, wherein the user profile is generated using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifiers; and
directing ads to the user identified by the universal identifier, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel are communication channels of an advertising campaign.
12. The computer program product of claim 11 , wherein the operations further comprise generating a third non-universal user identifier associated with a third communication channel in response to a third action of the mobile device.
13. The computer program product of claim 12 wherein the first, second, and third communication channels are selected from the group consisting of receiving text messages, receiving emails, viewing a video, viewing a webpage, viewing a video ad, viewing a webpage ad, interacting with social applications, and downloading an application.
14. The computer program product of claim 11 wherein the mobile device channel specific identifiers are selected from the group consisting of a first party cookie, a third party cookie, and a plurality of product identifiers.
15. The computer program product of claim 11 wherein associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions is performed using a computing device running a Bayesian network to perform probabilistic user matching.
16. The computer program product of claim 11 wherein the operations further comprise comparing one or more user profiles to incoming request profiles using a probabilistic Bayesian network running on a computing device.
17. A computer-based method of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:
generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;
generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;
storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;
correlating the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile;
associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels such that the user can be tracked, wherein associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions is performed using a computing device running a Bayesian network to perform probabilistic user matching; and
directing ads to the user identified by the universal identifier, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel are communication channels of an advertising campaign.
18. The system of claim 6 wherein the federation server is further configured to:
direct ads to a user identified by the universal identifier, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel are communication channels of an advertising campaign; and
evaluate the ads to determine which of the ads has highest activity level by the universal identifier.
19. A computer-based method of tracking a user across a plurality of communication channels comprising:
generating a first non-universal user identifier associated with a first communication channel in response to a first action of a mobile device;
generating a second non-universal user identifier associated with a second communication channel in response to a second action of the mobile device;
storing the first non-universal user identifier and the second non-universal user identifier in a data repository;
correlating the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile;
associating the universal identifier with a plurality of actions performed with the mobile device such that the associated user profile comprises a mapping between the universal identifier and activities performed by the user across the plurality of communication channels such that a user can be tracked, wherein the user profile is generated using approximation methods including clustering and probabilistic matching using a plurality of mobile device channel specific identifier; and
directing ads to a user identified by the universal identifier, wherein the first communication channel and the second communication channel are communication channels of an advertising campaign.
20. The method of claim 19 further comprising, receiving user actions with a federation server from a mobile client application, before correlating the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile, wherein the user actions comprise actions associated with the first and the second communication channel; and
generating the universal identifier with the federation server before correlating the stored first non-universal user identifier and the stored second non-universal user identifier with a universal identifier having an associated user profile.