Title: Revenue management for broadcasting commercials: the channel's problem of selecting and scheduling the advertisements to be aired

Authors: Alf Kimms, Michael Muller-Bungart

Addresses: Chair of Logistics and Traffic Management, Department of Technology and Operations Management, Mercator School of Management, University of Duisburg-Essen, 47048 Duisburg, Germany. ' Chair of Logistics and Traffic Management, Department of Technology and Operations Management, Mercator School of Management, University of Duisburg-Essen, 47048 Duisburg, Germany

Abstract: We describe a planning problem at a broadcasting company (e.g. a TV or radio channel). Advertisers place orders for commercials. Typically, each order consists of multiple spots, and the airdates of the spots are not fixed by the advertiser. Therefore, the channel has to decide simultaneously which orders to accept or to reject and when spots from accepted orders should be scheduled. We formally describe this problem in a mathematical model, present five heuristics, develop a rigorous method to generate a test bed and evaluate the performance of the heuristics on over 10,000 instances of various sizes.

Keywords: advertising; commercials; broadcasting; flexible products; order acceptance; revenue management; scheduling; planning; radio; television; TV.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRM.2007.011192

International Journal of Revenue Management, 2007 Vol.1 No.1, pp.28 - 44

Published online: 29 Oct 2006 *

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