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The TV advertisements scheduling problem

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Abstract

A TV channel has a single advertisement break of duration h and a convex continuous function \(f{:}\;[0,h] \rightarrow \mathbb {R}^+\) representing the TV rating points within the advertisement break. Given n TV advertisements of different durations \(p_j\) that sum up to h, and willingness to pay coefficients \(w_j\), the objective is to schedule them on the TV break in order to maximize the total revenue of the TV channel \(\sum _j w_j \int _{c_j-p_j}^{c_j} f(t) dt,\) where \([c_j-p_j,c_j)\) is the broadcast time interval of TV advertisement j. We show that this problem is NP-hard and propose a fully polynomial time approximation scheme, using a special dominance property of an optimal schedule and the technique of K-approximation sets and functions introduced by Halman et al. (Math Oper Res 34:674–685, 2009).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for partial support from the following sources: FONDECYT Grant 11140566 (F. Díaz-Núñez and Ó. C. Vásquez), Universidad de Santiago, Proyecto DICYT 061817VP (Ó. C. Vásquez) and Israel Science Foundation Grant 399/17 (N. Halman).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Santiago of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Fabián Díaz-Núñez & Óscar C. Vásquez

  2. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Nir Halman

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  1. Fabián Díaz-Núñez
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  2. Nir Halman
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  3. Óscar C. Vásquez
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Correspondence to Óscar C. Vásquez.

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Díaz-Núñez, F., Halman, N. & Vásquez, Ó.C. The TV advertisements scheduling problem. Optim Lett 13, 81–94 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-018-1251-0

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