Externally informed counterfactual prediction

Abstract

An online system receives explicit user data and explicit event data, and implicit user data and implicit event data from a third party system. The online system generates an implicit users/implicit events data feature, an explicit users/explicit events data feature, and an explicit users/implicit events data feature. The online system generates a prediction of the counterfactual rate based on the implicit users/implicit events data feature, the explicit users/explicit events data feature, and the explicit users/explicit events data feature, the counterfactual rate indicating the likelihood that target users matching certain characteristics caused an event to occur when the target are not been presented with content by the online system, the content configured to induce users to cause the event to occur. A combined prediction rate is presented to the third party system based on the counterfactual rate.