Multi-criteria Approach to Planning of Information Spreading Processes Focused on Their Initialization with the Use of Sequential Seeding

Information spreading within social networks and techniques related to viral marketing has begun to attract more interest of online marketers. While much of the prior research focuses on increasing the coverage of the viral marketing campaign, in real-life applications also other campaign goals and limitations need to be considered, such as limited time or budget, or assumed dynamics of the process. This paper presents a multi-criteria approach to planning of information spreading processes, with focus on the campaign initialization with the use of sequential seeding. A framework and example set of criteria was proposed for evaluation of viral marketing campaign strategies. The initial results showed that an increase of the count of seeding iterations and the interval between them increases the achieved coverage at the cost of increased process duration, yet without the need to increase seeding fraction or to provide incentives for increased propagation probability.