Information distribution systems that select distribution information on the basis of action information representing an action of a user and transmit the selected distribution information to a terminal of the user are known (see PTL 1, for example).
In the information distribution system described in PTL 1, information representing the position of a user terminal and information representing merchandise purchased by the user are used as action information. In the related technique, a server device has a registered user file, a purchase history file, a mobility pattern file, and an advertisement request file which contains distribution information representing advertisements. The registered user file is a file in which users who own user terminals are registered, and a purchase history file is a file in which purchase histories of the users are recorded. The mobility pattern file is a file in which users' mobility patterns based on histories of positional information of the user terminals are recorded. The server device extracts users to whom distribution information is to be transmitted on the basis of the purchase history file, the mobility pattern file and the advertisement request file. With this, the information distribution system can transmit distribution information selected on the basis of the purchase history and mobility pattern of a user to the user terminals. Distribution information selected on the basis of user's action information in this way will be hereinafter also referred to as personalized distribution information. A service that transmits personalized distribution information to user terminals will be also referred to as a personalized service.
In the personalized service described above, user's action information is privacy information for the user who provides the information. Accordingly, users may feel a strong reluctance to provide their action information to the information distribution system. However, in the information distribution system described in PTL 1, users who do not provide action information cannot receive personalized distribution information.
An information distribution system that addresses the problem is described in PTL 2. In the information distribution system, a user terminal holds distribution information and a selection logic. The selection logic is a logic for selecting distribution information on the basis of user's action information. The distribution information and the selection logic are distributed from a server beforehand. Such selection logics are generated beforehand by an analysis server which analyses action information acquired from a terminal of a subject. A user terminal collects action information of the user of the own device and applies the selection logic to the collected action information to select and output distribution information. This allows the user to acquire distribution information corresponding to the action information without providing the action information to the server.