Targeting Advertisements Based on User Interactions

A method comprising:

• storing at a social networking system a plurality of graph objects interconnected by graph actions, the graph actions having graph action types defined by entities external to the social networking system, where a graph action represents a relationship between two or more graph objects and the graph action type defines the relationship between the two or more graph objects;
• maintaining a plurality of edge objects having a plurality of edge types on the social networking system, where a subset of the plurality of edge objects have graph action types associated with the plurality of graph actions;
• receiving targeting criteria for an advertisement, the targeting criteria including a targeted graph action type and at least one targeted object property;
• retrieving a subset of the plurality of edge objects based on the targeting criteria, the subset of the plurality of edge objects having the targeted graph action type and the subset of the plurality of edge object associated with a subset of the plurality of graph objects having the at least one targeted object property;
• determining a subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system associated with the subset of the plurality of edge objects;
• and
• providing the advertisement for display to the subset of the plurality of users of the social networking system.

A method comprising:

• maintaining a plurality of edge objects having a plurality of edge types on a social networking system, the plurality of edge objects representing a plurality of actions performed by a plurality of users of the social networking system on a plurality of objects;
• receiving one or more definitions of one or more interest categories, where each definition includes at least one edge type;
• retrieving a subset of the plurality of edge objects based on each edge object of the subset of the plurality of edge objects having an edge type matching the at least one edge type in the one or more definitions;
• determining, based on the one or more definitions, at least one interest category for at least one user of the social networking system associated with the retrieved subset of the plurality of edge objects;
• and
• associating the at least one interest category with the at least one user.