Models of advertising response implicitly assume that the entire advertising budget is spent on disseminating one message. In practice, managers use different themes of advertising (for example, price advertisements versus product advertisements) and within each theme they employ different...

The two reports and two articles (as well as a Commentary) that follow are the finalists from the 2004 ISMS Practice Prize Competition, representing the best examples of rigor plus relevance that our profession produces.

This paper presents a review of recent developments that have taken place in the area of dynamic optimal control models in advertising subsequent to the comprehensive survey of the literature by Sethi in 1977. The basic problem underlying these models is that of determining optimal advertising...