Key Indicators for Advertisers choosing to implement their ads include Ratings and Shares:

Ratings and shares let producers, TV networks, and other people invested in specific shows know who and how many people are watching their show.  This enables them to know if their show is popular or not in regards to other shows on television.  Ratings are the percentage of people watching a program out of all possible TV households (with TV’s on or off).  Shares on the other hand are shown as the percentage of those actually using the televisions that are tuned into your station or network at a specific time.   

This information is so valuable to advertisers because they can see what their target audience is watching and how to reach them the most.  A great example of this is through taking a look at last Saturday’s tv ratings of college football.  Nielsen TV ratings reported that 4.01 million people tuned into the Wisconsin vs. Nebraska game on ABC, and 3.57 million people tuned into the Texas at Oklahoma State Game on FOX.  Of those games, viewers ages 18-48 had ratings of 1.2 and Share of 4 for ABC viewing, and a rating of 1.1 and Share of 4 for the FOX viewing (as seen below).

If you were an advertiser that wanted to reach the male audience, finding the demographic that you wanted to reach along with the ratings and shares of individual programs would be your first step into reaching them.  ESPN illustrates that TV programs such as college football attract and audience that is 94% male and 66% inbetween theage of 18 and 34 .  This information, along with the ratings and shares found above are a goldmine for advertisers for companies like Men's apparel stores, Truck companies, alcohol distributors and other companies geared toward men.  

To get to your consumer, you must understand and be able to analyze information about TV audiences.  This enables you to cut down costs and get directly to your consumer.  With this information, both consumers are receiving what they are interested in and advertisers are taking that opportunity and running with it.    

In today's world, TV can not be the only source of entertainment at the same time.  Now, 52% of men and women use their phones as other sources of entertainment while watching TV. Multi tasking has become the new normal when watching TV.  With 81% of people aged 18 to 24 using their cell phones while watching TV, our worlds are contently being updated by texts, Facebook messages, twitter posts, news, all while watching a program on TV.  Advertisers should take a more serious look at this trend as it will probably rise in the next couple of years to where over 75% of the whole population will be multi tasking between screens when watching TV.