Targeting Advertisements To Customized Groups Of Users Of An Online System

摘要

An online system enables developers of third-party applications to specify online system users to receive advertisements. The online system generates and sends a user-specific identifier for online system users that use a third-party application when an advertiser associated with the third-party application requests a user-specific identifier from the online system. For example, the online system retrieves user identifying information associated with a client device identifier provided by an advertiser and generates a user identifier by encrypting the retrieved user identifying information. The advertiser may include one or more user-specific identifiers in an advertisement request sent to an online system to present an advertisement in the advertisement request to online system users corresponding to the user-specific identifiers. The online system determines whether to present the advertisement to users based in part on whether users correspond to user-specific identifiers included in the advertisement request.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
retrieving information identifying a user of an online system that is maintained by the online system based at least in part on a request including information describing an identity of the user from an application executing on a client device associated with the user; generating an identifier associated with the user by encrypting the information identifying the user; sending the generated identifier to the client device for retrieval by the application; receiving an ad request including an advertisement and one or more identifiers associated with one or more users of the online system; identifying an opportunity to present one or more advertisements to the user of the online system via the client device; and sending the advertisement included in the ad request to the client device for presentation to the user if the identifier associated with the user matches an identifier included in the received ad request.