ADPULS: An Advertising Model with Wearout and Pulsation

Although empirical evidence shows that advertising wears out over time and that advertising pulsation may be superior to a strategy of constant spending, current advertising models neither represent the wearout phenomenon nor consider pulsation as an optimal strategy. In this article, the wearout phenomenon is represented in a model which distinguishes between level stimuli and differential stimuli of advertising. The model is applied to several brands, and both advertising stimuli are found to be significant. A pulsation strategy is shown to be optimal under both an unconstrained and a constrained advertising budget.