Profit Maximization through Online Advertising Scheduling for a Wireless Video Broadcast Network

Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of how to make the wireless service provider (WSP) earn profits in a wireless video broadcast network with consideration of advertisement insertion. At the beginning, this study examines the profit components by analyzing traffic provision and advertisement insertion. This study considers using two components for profit maximization—one is the function for allocating video rates, and the other is the function for inserting advertisement duration. The maximum achievable profit depends on joint optimization of optimal video-rate vectors and advertisement-duration vectors, which are usually computationally intensive. To resolve such a complexity problem, this work also proposes an effective algorithm for joint optimization. First, the overall profit is formulated as the solution of four local optimization problems through horizontal and vertical decomposition. Second, a theoretic polymatroidal framework is introduced in our work for optimization as this framework is proved effective in profit maximization of multiuser systems. Third, this study shows that the overall profit can be maximized by finding the optimal profit points on the boundary of the rate and duration regions. As a result, the optimum points and the total profit can be obtained through a hierarchical greedy algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of making maximum profits for WSPs in a wide range of broadcasting rates.