LAUSR

Abstract Considering the increasing complexity of social networks and user behaviors, it is very challenging for advertisers to formulate their strategies of selecting proper initial seed users in their social marketing efforts. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing an agent-based propagation model and injecting it into typical social networks with three types of structures, i.e., Erdős-Renyi random graph, Watt-Strogatz small world graph, and Barabasi-Albert scale-free graph. We instantiate this agent-based model with demographic characteristics extracted from real-world census data collected in China. By investigating the diffusion process of advertising information in these social networks, we can analyze and compare the performance of advertisers’ targeting and influencer strategies. Our experimental results indicate that advertisers adopting influencer strategies should manipulate the initial well-connected seeds to deliver information only to the potential customers instead of a wide range of generic users.