On-Line Brand Advertising Using Social Networks Based On User-Generated Content

This paper is about brand advertising on the web, and about a method for taking advantage of user-generated content on social-networking sites (and beyond) to improve on-line advertising. Different from most sponsored search advertising and click-driven display advertising, on-line brand advertising is less straightforward to assess, and perhaps for that reason has received much less attention in the academic literature and in practice. Brand advertising generally is difficult to assess; however, the on-line environment provides unique opportunities, because as one describe below certain brand actions become visible and measurable on-line. Furthermore, brand advertising has a huge opportunity for growth.