Scheduling TV commercials using genetic algorithms

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of scheduling commercial messages during the peak of viewing time of a TV channel is formulated as a combinatorial auction-based mathematical programming model. Through this model, a profitable and efficient mechanism for allocating the advertising time to advertisers is developed by which the revenue of TV channels is maximised while the effectiveness of advertising is increased. We developed a steady-state genetic algorithm to find an optimal or a near optimal solution for the proposed problem. A computational experiment was conducted for evaluating the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. A set of test problems with different sizes were generated, using the pseudorandom generation mechanism, and solved by the proposed genetic algorithm. The optimal solutions of the linear programming relaxation of these test problems were also obtained and were used for evaluating the quality of solutions obtained by the developed algorithm. The results of this computational experiment revealed the robustness of the solutions and acceptably low computational time for obtaining these solutions. The computational results also demonstrated that the proposed genetic algorithm had an appropriate ability to preserve population diversity during the search and was capable of obtaining high-quality solutions for the proposed problem. IntroductionTelevision plays an important role in transmitting advertising messages. Although the television industry is mainly an entertainment provider, it takes advantage of the large number of viewers to convey advertising messages. Therefore advertising is the primary source of revenue for TV industries and they are extremely dependent on advertising income. In early days, television programmes were owned by advertisers, today however, it is rare for an entire programme to be sponsored by one advertiser. Rather, TV networks sell the time slots for ads during an entertainment programme.One of the major problems faced by TV channels is how to schedule the commercials in advertising breaks in order to maximise their revenues. The problem is difficult because of limited advertising time and the existence of some constraints that should be considered to maintain the effectiveness of advertising. Hence, we gain the advantages of a profitable and efficient resource allocation mechanism called combinatorial auction (CA) to formulate this problem.Combinatorial auctions involve a single bid taker allocating multiple distinguishable items amongst a set of bidders. Unlike traditional auctions, in CAs bidders can place bids on combinations of items, called packages (bundles), rather than just individual items in order to express more complex preferences. There might be economic relations between items in an auction. Therefore, valuations on packages of items can be super-or sub-additive. We call this, complimentarily and substitutability, respectively. The items may be (1) complements: the value of a bundle is greater than the sum of the values of its parts (e.g. a construction company ...

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