Patent ID: 8533321
Filing Date: 2013-09-10
Classification: G06Q,H04L

Abstract:
1. A system for tracking a cumulative number of unique visitors to different objects, comprising: a storage device for maintaining a data structure that allows direct determination of the cumulative number of different visitors exposed to the different objects and for maintaining a number of separate unique database records as a number of unique combinations of objects, wherein each unique database record designates a unique combination of visited objects and a number of unique unrepeated visits, the objects being different websites displaying a same set of advertisements of a same campaign; an advertisement (ad) server for maintaining a list of source URLs of the different objects, wherein each of the different objects can be visited by the multiple visitors, wherein the ad server, upon receiving a request from a visitor to visit an object, serving a source URL of an object and establishing a connection between an overlap server and a visitor; and an overlap server for examining a cookie stored in the visitor during the established connection, for determining whether the visitor previously visited the currently requested object associated with the source URL to be served and a current permutation of objects previously visited by the visitor that conforms to a specified visitation order, and for updating the data structure in the storage device and the cookie based on the examination result of the cookie.