Dynamic optimization models for displaying outdoor advertisement at the right time and place

Digital billboards, as a new form of outdoor advertising, has gained popularity in recent years per its revolutionized way to control when and where the specific ads appear. However, this development also demands more complicated optimization for strategic deployments: the advertisers have to not only decide on a set of locations to display their ads, but also when to display them. The existing static optimization approaches become insufficient for this dynamic scenario to match advertisement and intended audience. Therefore, this research proposes three models in a workflow to mine mobile phone data and points of interest (POIs) data and to meet advertising needs in various situations. The three optimization models include a dynamic audience model to maximize the coverage of the target users, a dynamic environment model to maximize the coverage of the target environment, and a dynamic integrated model to maximize the coverage of both target audience and environment. A case study using shopping ads in Wuxue, China tests the three optimalization models. The results show that the proposed models are effective for providing an optimal solution for digital billboard configuration with a greater coverage of the target audience and environment compared to the state-of-the-art static models.

Automated summary

Digital billboards have become increasingly popular as a new form of outdoor advertising due to their innovative way of control over when and where specific ads appear. This study proposes three optimization models to meet advertising needs, which were successfully tested in a case study in Wuxue, China. The research shows that the proposed models are effective in providing an optimal solution for digital billboard configuration with a greater coverage of the target audience and environment.