TITLE:
Structural Holes and Banner-Ad Click-Throughs
AUTHORS:
Starling David Hunter III, Ravi Chinta
KEYWORDS:
Online Advertising; Social Network Analysis; Social Capital; Social Networking; Twitter, Social Media; Banner Advertisements; Click-Through
JOURNAL NAME:
Technology and Investment,
Vol.4 No.1,
February
26,
2013
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the impact of social capital on advertising performance in an online social network. Specifically, we show that a widely-employed measure of social capital—network constraint—explains variation in the number of click-throughs received by 5986 banner advertisements appearing on 25 Twitter-related websites. As predicted, banner advertisements receive significantly more clicks when placed on websites that bridge structural holes, i.e. bridge otherwise disconnected segments of the network.