Demo targeting is still the dominant targeting method despite the availability of more granular attributes.

Quote from Dave Poltrack — President of Research @ CBS.
“Age/sex demographics do not have a good relationship with advertising value…No one has ever proved that age/sex is a good surrogate for any product usage.”

75% of national TV audience time occurs during shows with a 0.5 or lower rating. Local advertisers face an even greater challenge evaluating these shows for advertising due to the low sample size in a given market (210 local markets).

TV planning and buying needs to shift away from demographics and towards people and purchase based audiences.

Counterintuitive point. Increasing audience fragmentation makes people and purchase based targeting MORE effective.

Quote from Dave Morgan — CEO @ Simulmedia.
“I used to think that demographics would remain TV’s primary currency for the next seven to 10 years, and that purchase and people metrics would only be used as “secondary” currencies. I no longer believe that, largely because it’s becoming more and more apparent to TV networks that they are leaving massive amounts of money on the table pricing and selling their inventory on demographics and GRPs instead of deep target audiences who represent real, self-evident value to marketers.”

More on this topic:
1) Advanced TV Continues to Build Momentum
2) How programmatic will change TV measurement