SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM DATA EXCHANGE

An online publisher provides content items such as advertisements to users. To enable publishers to provide content items to users who meet targeting criteria of the content items, an exchange server aggregates data about the users. The exchange server receives user data from two or more sources, including a social networking system and one or more other service providers. To protect the user's privacy, the social networking system and the service providers may provide the user data to the exchange server without identifying the user. The exchange server tracks each unique user of the social networking system and the service providers using a common identifier, enabling the exchange server to aggregate the users' data. The exchange server then applies the aggregated user data to select content items for the users, either directly or via a publisher.