Market Approach to Social Ads: The MyLikes Example and Related Problems.

A potential way to advertise on social networks is to rely on word of mouth. What is a market approach to word of mouth social advertising? We describe an example: MyLikes, which is a new advertising platform. It lets anyone on a social network be a "publisher" of advertisements (ads). It provides a matching market so advertisers can find social publishers to advertise their products. Further, interestingly, it lets the social publishers modify the ad. As a result, a single base ad may be morphed into many. MyLikes lets publishers broadcast and communicate the ads to others in their social network. Finally, it provides a mechanism for advertisers to pay the publishers based on engagement of the social users with the ads. We describe research problems that emerge in such a marketplace for social ads.