“Advertising pricing relies on measuring how many TVs are tuned in to a specific channel, and not whether people are actually watching the TVs.”
Super Bowl spots cost up to $6.5 million for 30 seconds, and nearly a third of all TV ads play to nobody. Viewers are four times more likely to leave the room than change the channel. Nielsen counts TVs, not people. The networks have no reason to fix a metric that bills advertisers for empty couches.