Have you ever sat down to watch a night of good old fashioned cable TV and wondered why your favorite graphically violent serial about zombies or meth cooking school teachers is being attached to advertisements trying to sell you on probiotic yogurt? It’s not because the media executive in charge of scheduling the ads necessarily thinks that you are the target demographic for regulating food (though they are hoping that you’re interested). It’s because they don’t have an accurate idea of who out there is buying what they sell.

Nielsen Catalina is changing how advertisements make it to your eyes by doing what it does best – providing analytics solutions to media providers.The joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina launched AdVantics on Demand on Monday. It is a new web based platform in the AdVantics suite of analytics solutions, and it will provide better targeting for advertisements across all media using a gigantic pool of consumer and audience data.

AdVantics on Demand is all about finding the right vehicle to deliver advertising to the proper buying demographic, or “buyergraphic.” The key word there is “buy.” Knowing that people who watch science fiction shows belong to a demographic of homeowners that have grass lawns is one thing, but knowing if the viewing audience actually cares about their home landscaping enough to purchase fertilizer is essential information when looking for a prime spot to sell lawn care products.

If you haven’t heard, television is losing its once ubiquitous popularity to the likes of advertisement-free subscription services like Netflix. Original programming is a premium, and is pretty much the only way to stay afloat. However, a massive audience still remains, and Nielsen has been keeping tabs on them.

Television networks can still be a viable method of advertising, but only with the kind of analytics being proposed here. Catalina has sucessfully cornered demographics before, advertising to them through their mobile phone initiatives like BuyerVision Mobile. It stands to reason, then, that AdVantics on Demand will become as necessary to the television industry’s survival as the Nielsen ratings system.