Scheduling Commercial Videotapes in Broadcast Television

Abstract

This paper, motivated by the experiences of major US−based broadcast television network, presents algorithms and heuristics to schedule commercial videotapes. Major advertisers purchase several slots to air commercials during a given time period on a broadcast network. We study the problem of scheduling advertiser's commercials in the slots it purchased when the same commercial is to be aired multiple times. Under such a situation, the advertisers typically want the airings of a commercial to be as much evenly spaced as possible. Thus, our objective is to schedule a set of commercials on a set of available slots such that multiple airings of the same commercial are as much evenly spaced as possible. A natural formulation of this problem is a mixed integer program that can be solved using third party solvers. We also develop a branch−and−bound algorithm based on a problem specific bounding scheme. Both approaches fail to solve larger problem instances within a reasonable timeframe. We present an alternative mixed integer program that lends itself to efficient solution. For solving even larger problems, we present multiple heuristics. Various extensions of the basic model are discussed. November 2002Abstract This paper, motivated by the experiences of major US-based broadcast television network, presents algorithms and heuristics to schedule commercial videotapes. Major advertisers purchase several slots to air commercials during a given time period on a broadcast network. We study the problem of scheduling advertiser's commercials in the slots it purchased when the same commercial is to be aired multiple times. Under such a situation, the advertisers typically want the airings of a commercial to be as much evenly spaced as possible. Thus, our objective is to schedule a set of commercials on a set of available slots such that multiple airings of the same commercial are as much evenly spaced as possible. A natural formulation of this problem is a mixed integer program that can be solved using third party solvers. We also develop a branch-and-bound algorithm based on a problem specific bounding scheme. Both approaches fail to solve larger problem instances within a reasonable timeframe. We present an alternative mixed integer program that lends itself to efficient solution. For solving even larger problems, we present multiple heuristics. Various extensions of the basic model are discussed.

Scheduling Commercials on Broadcast Television

“…They implemented their algorithms in a system that is currently being used by NBC generating more than $50 million in additional revenues annually. Bollapragada et al (2004) have developed an algorithm to schedule client videotapes in the commercial slots they purchased to meet certain client specific objectives. The problem that is discussed in this paper has not been addressed in the literature to the best of our knowledge.…”

Scheduling commercial advertisements for television

“…As it is done in Bollapragada et al (2004), the objective function consists in minimising the sum of absolute deviations from the ideal timing between each pair of consecutive airings of each advertisement; that is:…”

“…Usually the order does not define the airdates of its advertisements but some general rules (Kimms and Müller-Bungart, 2007). These rules may include audience rating requirements (e.g., Fleming and Pashkevich, 2007;Pereira et al, 2007) and regularity in the multiple airings of the advertisements of the same brand (e.g., Bollapragada et al, 2004). Thus, the problem that the TV channel faces is to determine for each advertiser, the schedule of advertisements (i.e., which advertisement will air in each spot) that best satisfies the order of the advertiser.…”

Variations in the efficiency of a mathematical programming solver according to the order of the constraints in the model

“…For example, it can be used in the automobile industry to sequence the models to be produced on a mixed-model assembly line (Monden, 1983). Other contexts in which the RTVP appears are the computer multi-threaded systems and network servers (Waldspurger and Weihl, 1995), the periodic machine maintenance problem (BarNoy et al, 2002), the scheduling of advertising slots for television (Brusco, 2008), the design of sales catalogs (problem introduced in Bollapragada et al, 2004) and the scheduling of waste collection (Herrmann, 2007).…”