Time Optimal Profit Maximization in a Social Network
Yong Liu, Wei Zhang
International Journal of Web Applications, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2018.
DOI: 
Link: http://www.dline.info/ijwa/fulltext/v10n1/ijwav10n1_2.pdf
Abstract:
Influence maximization aims to seek k nodes from a social network such that the expected number of activated
nodes by these k nodes is maximized. However, influence maximization is different from profit maximization for a real
marketing campaign. Moreover, we observe that when promotion time increases, the number of activated nodes tends to be
stable eventually. In this paper, we first use real action log to propose a novel influence power allocation model with time
span called IPA-T, and then present time optimal profit maximization problem called TOPM based on IPA-T. To address this
problem, we propose an effective approximation algorithm called Profit-Max. Experimental results on real datasets verify the
effectiveness and efficiency of Profit-Max.