Scheduling TV Commercials: Models and Solution Methodologies

Commercial advertising on television is a billion-pound industry which brings in a large percentage of the revenue for advertisement-based broadcasters (ADASSOC 2007). In order to maximize income, the broadcasters must ensure that they utilize the time devoted to advertisements in the most profitable manner possible. Commercial systems currently used by television companies to schedule advertisements are limited in the quality of the end result and flexibility to the broadcaster. Research in this area has been quite limited, with the papers that have been published generally optimizing different models. For example, Hägele, Dúnlaing and Riis (2001) models the problem as scheduling individual advertisements within three minute slots. Benoist, Bourreau and Rottenbourg (2007) schedules packages of advertisements and Bollapragada, Bussieck and Malilk (2004) investigates how to schedule a given advertisement a number of times, whilst adhering to various constraints.