Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency Optimization at Procter & Gamble

The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is a consumer goods corporation that employs over 90,000 people and has operations in roughly 80 countries worldwide. Products in P&G’s 10-category portfolio of products are sold in over 180 countries. The Consumer Research Analytics group at P&G empowers internal clients by using analytics to ensure that the products in P&G’s portfolio of products are not just well received by consumers but become the products of choice for the maximum number of consumers, thereby maximizing P&G’s market share. One of the most frequently used analytical approaches for managing a product line is Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency analysis. We replaced the previous enumerative approach with integer programming coupled with cuts to the unit hypercube to dramatically speed up the analysis. As a result, P&G achieved higher utilization of its system, improvements to existing products, and more thorough analyses for product line planning and other applications.