• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 27, 2010

Wealthy TV viewers: everyone wants them.  But what about years from now?

Wealthy viewers are often "light" TV viewers who typically are not exposed to specific brands.  So marketers will often pay a premium to get access to such viewers.

AMC's "Mad Men" gets a big percentage of wealthy viewers for a cable show. But it doesn't get the most affluent cable viewers; higher-rated shows like  USA's "Royal Pains" are much better at attracting this coveted demo.

Will these wealthy viewers still matter to advertisers when data from set-top boxes come around?

Maybe. The question is what actual data will be revealed from set-top boxes. There are privacy issues to consider, for one. Second, the good folks at the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement are not only concerned the data will be tough to get, NBC's research chief Alan Wurtzel (one of the creators of CIMM) has questioned just how valuable the data will be. 

While we wait, marketers maintain their old ways. This is continued good news for "Mad Men" and all its advertisers. For Sunday's season premiere, "Mad Men" hit 2.9 million viewers, up 5% from a year ago.

Wealthy TV viewers typically bring in big-ticket marketers. Last night  "Mad Men" had BMW sponsoring a limited-commercial edition of the show. (Typically "Men" offers up a smaller load of commercials versus other typical cable or network dramas).

Last season, "Mad Men" brought in an average of 890,000 wealthy viewers -- those whose incomes are $100,000 or more. That was less than half the wealthy viewers USA's "Royal Pains" gets. But "Men" is more efficient in bringing in those big income viewers. That's a plus.

Still looking for "wealthy" viewers? It's more about the right viewers.

Here's Wurtzel's take from a report in TVNewsCheck.com: "It's not just demos. It's what I'll call target ratings - ratings among people who are heavy soft drink users or people who are going to buy a car in the next three months. That's the kind of specificity they want."