LLM-Driven Agents for Influencer Selection in Digital Advertising Campaigns

In the digital world, influencers are pivotal as opinion leaders, shaping the views and choices of their influencees. Modern advertising often follows this trend, where marketers choose appropriate influencers for product endorsements, based on thorough market analysis. Previous studies on influencer selection have typically relied on numerical representations of individual opinions and interactions, a method that simplifies the intricacies of social dynamics. With the development of large language models (LLMs), we now have the opportunity to capture the nuanced exchanges of information within social networks. Hence, in this work, we first introduce an Influencer Dynamics Simulator (IDS), helping promoters identify and select the right influencers to market their products, based on LLM simulation. Concretely, we first propose an influencer-influencee engagement-based pre-selection module to screen potential influencer candidates. Subsequently, a simulation is constructed for these candidates and their influencees. Each user is represented as an LLM-based agent, drawing from their interaction history to deduce their profile and interests. The influencee agents will predict their behavior in response to influencer advertising. Finally, we develop a ranking metric designed to pinpoint influencers who are most likely to drive product purchases based on feedback from their influencees. To evaluate our framework, we collect a real-world advertising network dataset, including social relations, post and comment content, and user behaviors. Our dataset covers six products in diverse categories with their promoter influencers. Experiments show that IDS accurately identifies influencers from hundreds of candidates and provides valuable insights through detailed comments and specific attitudes.