Crypta
Crypta is a technology that helps to identify important user characteristics for advertisers, such as their age, income and interests, and what area of a city they live in.
How it works
Crypta technology is based on machine learning methods and determines whether a user can be included in a given group by their behavior on the internet. To do this, it researches typical representatives of this group behave on the internet. For example, it looks at what words they use in queries, what sites they visit, what time of day they go on the internet, and many other factors — only about 300. Data is updated daily to keep up with changes in people's interests and behavior.
Based on a combination of factors, Crypta calculates the probability that a user belongs to a particular group. The probability formula is also constantly being updated and corrected.
How to identify users on different devices
Every device and browser that a person uses to access the internet has its own unique identifier. Crypta can detect that all these identifiers belong to the same user based on how similar their behavior is across various devices or by using more precise factors, such as the same username. It also takes into account the fact that multiple people, such as family members or colleagues, might use the same device at once. That way Crypta provides a more complete portrait of the user.
User household
With Crypta, you can identify groups of devices that belong to the same household: family, apartment, or private home. The system uses a set of mathematical algorithms to identify home network IP addresses, while filtering out office and public networks (among other indicators, it analyzes the frequency of activity and the number of users per IP address), and groups them into households.
How it is used in ads
Crypta user data is taken into account when Yandex ads are selected for display on Yandex Advertising Network sites. Crypta is used for targeting display ads on users with certain characteristics (family status, profession, interests, and preferences). Text & Image ads can be targeted on short-term interests. For example, if a user searched the internet for infant formula and ordered a taxi with a car seat, we can assume that they have a small child. Likewise, if the user viewed resources about advertising or development, it's likely they work as a marketing specialist or programmer (respectively). Crypta data is also used for bid adjustments by gender and age.
The Yandex Audience service is based on Crypta. An advertiser can use it to create various user segments or find people that resemble the target audience, and then use this data in Yandex Direct campaigns. For example, in Yandex Audience you can build segments based on current coordinates and use them in campaigns targeted at residents of certain areas or who are near a specific location.