Optimization is the child of fragmentation and recency planning. Recency makes the goal cost-effective reach. Fragmentation presents more options for buying reach than the current system can handle. Enter Optimization to help us do the job. But this simple idea, "optimizing," becomes complicated as we understand the many ways it will affect how we plan, buy, and sell television.Ground-rules for a reach/recency optimizer are established, paying special attention to the conceptual issues of sequential reach goals, opportunity cost, and media values-and real-world issues of fragmentation, targeting, guarantees, brand allocation, and timing. The author concludes that the attempt to optimize will improve media planning and buying by forcing us to look at and calibrate our decision making.
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Erwin Ephron (1998) studied this question.