Systems and methods for automatically generating campaigns using advertising targeting information based upon affinity information obtained from an online social network

Abstract

Systems and methods for automatically targeting advertising on an online social network in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. One embodiment of the invention includes detecting affinities between a member profile and one or more keywords based upon data describing activities associated with the member profile, generating a database containing the member profiles and associating detected affinities between member profiles and keywords, identifying member profiles that are associated with an affinity to at least one offer keyword and other keywords for which the identified member profiles have an associated affinity, weighting the importance of the identified member profiles in accordance with an advertising strategy, selecting a set of targeting keywords for which the identified member profiles have an associated affinity, and providing the targeting keywords so that an online social network displays the specific offer to its members.

What is claimed: 
     
         1 . An advertising targeting system, comprising:
 a targeting server configured to obtain data from at least one server that forms part of an online social network, where the obtained data describes member profiles of members of the online social network and activities performed on the online social network that are associated with the member profiles;   wherein the targeting server is configured to detect affinities between a member profile and one or more keywords based upon data describing activities associated with the member profile;   wherein the targeting server is configured to generate a database containing the member profiles and associating detected affinities between member profiles and keywords;   wherein the targeting server is configured to identify member profiles within the database that are associated with an affinity to at least one offer keyword;   wherein the targeting server is configured to identify other keywords for which the identified member profiles have an associated affinity;   wherein the targeting server is configured to receive an advertising strategy and to weight the importance of the identified member profiles in accordance with the advertising strategy;   wherein the targeting server is configured to select a set of targeting keywords from the set of keywords for which the identified member profiles have an associated affinity based upon the weighted importance of the identified member profiles; and   wherein the targeting server is configured to provide the targeting keywords to a server that is part of the online social network so that the online social network displays the specific offer to members of the online social network targeted using the targeting keywords.   
     
     
         2 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 1 , wherein the targeting server is configured to score the affinity between a member profile and one or more keywords within data describing an activity associated with the member profile. 
     
     
         3 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 2 , wherein the targeting server is configured to determine sentiment related to one or more keywords within data describing an activity associated with a member profile. 
     
     
         4 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 2 , wherein the targeting server is configured to determine intent related to one or more keywords within data describing an activity associated with a member profile. 
     
     
         5 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 1 , wherein the targeting server is configured to select a set of keywords by clustering the member profiles identified as having associations with an affinity to at least one offer keyword. 
     
     
         6 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 5 , wherein the targeting server is configured to assign a feature vector to each of the identified keywords and to estimate the performance of the feature vector in targeting the specific offer to the desired audience. 
     
     
         7 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 6 , wherein the feature vector assigned to each of the identified keywords includes information concerning trends associated with the keyword. 
     
     
         8 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 7 , wherein the information concerning trends associated with the keyword include amplitude and frequency information related to at least one peak in the frequency spectrum of a keyword. 
     
     
         9 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 8 , wherein the frequency spectrum of the keyword is obtained by performing a discrete Fourier transform on counts of the number of occurrences of the keyword during periodic time intervals. 
     
     
         10 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 6 , wherein the feature vector of a keyword includes at least one value indicative of a relationship between the keyword and at least one of the offer keywords. 
     
     
         11 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 6 , wherein the feature vector of a keyword includes at least one value indicative a relationship between the keyword and at least one cluster of member profiles. 
     
     
         12 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 5 , wherein the targeting server is configured to estimate the performance of the feature vector in targeting the specific offer to the desired audience using a classifier. 
     
     
         13 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 5 , wherein the targeting server is configured to estimate performance by estimating the click-through rate of advertising targeted using the keyword. 
     
     
         14 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 1 , wherein the targeting server is configured to select a set of targeting keyword and demographic information combinations. 
     
     
         15 . The advertising targeting system of  claim 1 , wherein the targeting server is configured to select a set of optimal targeting keywords using set completion. 
     
     
         16 . A method of targeting a specific offer, comprising:
 indexing member profiles within one or more social networks for affinity to keywords using a targeting system that retrieves data concerning member profiles and activities from servers within an online social network;   identifying member profiles that have affinity for at least one offer keyword using the targeting system and the index;   identifying additional keywords for which the identified member profiles have affinity using the targeting system and the index;   weighting member profiles in accordance with a specified advertising strategy;   determining a set of keywords that target a desired audience based upon the identified additional keywords and the weighted member profiles using the targeting server; and   targeting presentation of advertisements for the specific offer to members of an online social network using the online social network and the targeting keywords determined by the targeting server.