Leveraging social-network connectivity to advertise
Small world theories have been substantiated by social experiments during the last century and by data during this one. In this paper I make a case for the effectiveness of advertising through personal social networks, as undesirable as it may be.
Six degrees of separation—the notion that, on average, any person on the planet is connected to any other person through a chain of only six consecutive acquaintances—isn't just an urban legend (or a Will Smith movie).
In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram devised an experiment that would forever change our understanding of human connection. He was curious about just how interconnected we really are. Could a letter, starting from a random person in the American heartland, reach a complete stranger across the country, simply by being passed from one acquaintance to another?
Milgram set out to test this idea. He selected "starters" in places like Nebraska and Kansas, and a specific "target person" living near Boston, Massachusetts. Each starter received a packet containing a letter explaining the study, some basic information about the target, and a roster to track its journey. The crucial instruction was simple: if you knew the target personally, send the letter directly to them. If not, send it to a first-name acquaintance who you believed would be more likely to know the target. With each step, a postcard was sent back to Milgram's team, allowing them to follow the letter's path.
What he discovered was remarkable. For the letters that successfully completed their journey, the average chain length was around six steps. This groundbreaking finding gave rise to the now-famous concept of "six degrees of separation," suggesting that any two people in the United States, no matter how seemingly distant, could be linked by a surprisingly short chain of acquaintances. While not every letter made it to its destination, the experiment powerfully demonstrated the inherent interconnectedness of our social networks, revealing a "small world" hiding just beneath the surface of everyday life.
The premise of this article is that the interconnectedness of our personal social networks could be leveraged for targeted communication to desired groups, such as advertisements. We will construct a realistic and relatable social network and consider mathematically the interconnectivity among its members.
Read the full PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EIXhD4baEwIr_9cRmnzVHgjABl9ufr9f/view?usp=sharing .
Comments