How Superbowl Commercials Affect My Social Network: An Empirical Study on the Evolution of Social Ties through Revealed Preferences

Marketers use online social networks for target and promotion. Identifying influentials that disproportionately affect others is challenging due to network dynamics and social interactions. In this paper, we focus on the former by conducting a quasi-natural experiment on American Superbowl to investigate shifting tie strengths through revealed preferences and exploring the interplay between popularity and homophily on dynamic networks. We hypothesize that sociometrics such as centrality and transitivity need not change, but network evolves through strengthening or weakening social ties. Our findings highlight the importance of shared preferences or homophily in retaining social ties in dynamic networks, and show that popular users’ networks are not necessarily more robust to external events such as marketing campaigns. The unfavourable endorsement may decay the popular user’s relationship with her followers. Our study contributes to dynamic social network research by specifically targeting at shifting tie strength and provides novel insights on social media marketing.

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