Why are ratings and audience figures important?

www.barb.co.uk
www.abc.org.uk
www.rajar.co.uk
www.google.co.uk/trends
www.alexa.com

The top 5 most viewed programmes on BBC3 this week (barb.co.uk)
1 Eastenders (Tue 2202) 1.109
2 Don't Tell The Bride (Tue 2103) 1.098
3 Eastenders (Fri 2201) 1.093
4 Eastenders (Thu 2201) 1.045
5 Edingburgh Comedy Fest Live (Thu 2100) 887

526,216 Total Average Net Circulation / Distribution Per Issue (abc.org.uk)
We looked at different research on audience figures, why are ratings/audience figures so important? Helps them to figure oute their demographic, to see what time to ait the programmes. The larger the audience, the more they can charge for advertising. They can also see by the ratings if the show is succesful and if they could have another season.

We made a focus group to discuss what advertising we take in and what we ignore.
It was shown that viral advertising was the most popular way of advertising in our group. Getting links by friends is more trustwordy then pop-ups or banners, because with pop-ups you might get virus's.
I think focus groups are a good research method but in our focus group we didn't have enough depth in the answer they were giving. I think Focus groups could be a very good way to research but they'll have to be run by a great leader.