Accounting for bias of user characteristics when determining consumption of content by online system users

摘要

An online system determines one or more metrics describing consumption of content by various users by identifying users of the online system capable of being identified based on information received from multiple client devices. For example, the online system identifies users associated with user identifiers that are also associated with other types of identifying information (e.g., cookies, device identifiers). From the identified users, the online system generates a set of users based on a distribution of characteristics. The distribution of characteristics may be determined by the online system as characteristics of a group of users or received by the online system from a third party system and describes characteristics of users of the third party system. Based on interactions with content by users in the set, the online system determines one or more metrics describing consumption of content.