How many people actually watch TV commercials?

In a very recent Mc Kinsey article on building brands in China they mention that research proved " .... that many Chinese consumers are tuning out this bombardment  (on TV) of marketing messages and now resist them even more fiercely than people in Western markets do. (....) in 2004 Chinese television viewers left the room or changed channels 72 percent of the time when ads were aired—more than viewers in other major countries—compared with 42 percent in 1999"

The question "How many people watch TV" is another question than "How many people watch TV-commercials" .

This is the question Nielsen will try to answer as from november on. From then on they will provide formal ratings for commercial breaks and the WSJ says it is "a move with far-reaching implications for the fast-changing media world." Now they provide only  ratings only for individual TV programs in their entirety. What brands pay is based on that rating. Finally everybody will see that viewership declines noticeably when a program breaks for commercials. WSJ thinks (and they're right) "It could also accelerate the flow of advertising dollars out of television to the Internet and new digital media."  Television executives fight back. One of them argues "The bottom line is that there is still no better way to reach a mass audience,"  Why are they still thinking in terms of mass media for a so called mass audience, when all media are fragmenting and when more and more members of that mass audience want relevant, personalised messages where and when they want
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