Do not lose sight of what Nielsen is measuring. The nominal Rating translates into the extent of broader market coverage. But for something as specific as College Basketball broadcasters are focusing on a much narrower target demographic. The Super Bowl covers a broader TD so it opens up the aperture for more products willing to advertise. Sponsors of Big East CBB are only concerned with their coverage of their TD and will be concerned with penetration by zip code.
PepsiCo tracks, among many other variables, how many orders Pizza Hut receives by commercial break by zip code by store. A subset of that is by Pizza Hut commercial break by zip code by store. Pizza Hut doesn't care about the nominal Nielsen rating for a game. They care about TD coverage by zip code and Share of Voice factors. And while Nielsen publishes the Nominal rating for a broadcast they charge advertisers billions of dollars for the micro-analytical ratings. PepsiCo could care less how a show rates overall but they do care how it rates among specific TDs by zip code. This is how ad spend is valued and sold.
Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Cola, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Doritos, Tostitos, Fritos, Lays, Ruffles, etc... all know the value of ad spots during specific broadcasts and pay accordingly. I guarantee that the Doritos Brand manager knows how many units she sold by hour at any Safeway and how that correlates to ad spend effectiveness (both above the line and synchronized channel specific below the line.)
My point being, the nominal Nielsen Rating is important to Fox or ESPN but much less so than the micro-analytics. When Fox sits down with Miller Brewing to sell time on BG basketball they are speaking TDs by zip and not nominal ratings. We speak of the latter because that is what is published in the paper. But advertisers and broadcasters never speak of that as Nielsen sells both fine grained viewership analysis that is far more relevant to those constituencies.
