TV Spot CM Scheduling Problems and Their Solutions

Abstract

The scheduling of TV commercials is currently done manually, and its automation and efficiency remains a significant challenge for broadcasters. This study aims to automate this scheduling process. In this study, we modeled the scheduling task as four types of 0-1 integer programming problems and evaluated the characteristics of the obtained solutions. Among the proposed models, in particular, the weekly partitioning model and the greedy algorithm-based model are designed to use broadcast slots from the first half of the month and to use a certain percentage of all broadcast slots evenly, respectively. An evaluation experiment was conducted using a test dataset which is based on actual one-month scheduling data from a domestic broadcaster, and the results suggest that all of the proposed models can generally achieve the targeted GRP (Gross Rating Point) goals outlined in the contracts. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the weekly partitioning model and the greedy algorithm-based model can provide the solutions as intended by the design.