Cooperation of advertising companies in social networks: A graph and game theory approaches

Advertisement in companies that are active in social network is becoming a key success factor these days. The cooperative advertising enables companies to improve effectiveness of the advertisement efforts. In this research, we first present a mathematical model to quantify the profit of cooperation between the companies in a network. Afterwards, cooperative game theory methods such as Shapley value, Core-center, Least core, and τ-value are proposed to distribute benefits of the cooperative advertisement of the companies in the social networks. A numerical example of a simple social network with three advertising companies is presented to evaluate results of the models. It is shown that the profit obtained from coalition is greater than individual profits of the members. In this regard, fair allocation of the extra profit among companies ensures their satisfaction and long-term cooperation.