Advances in Media Decision Models

This review is intended to provide an overview and assessment of work conducted largely in the academic community on advertising media decision models in the past thirty years or so. The area of media decision models in advertising will be considered in this review from two standpoints: (1) Those models which aim at estimation of the numbers of people in target markets exposed to the media schedule (reach and frequency of exposure distribution models); and (2) those models which often incorporate exposure distribution models as their fundamental building block and aim at the complete planning and scheduling of the media program (comprehensive media planning models). I. Reach and Frequency Media Models The issue which has come to serve as the focus of those in the United States, as well as other countries interested in exposure distribution models has its origins in the need of advertising practitioners to know how many people will be exposed to their advertisements. This “need to know ” is motivated by a