The CEO of the biggest French TV channel said in 2004:

What we sell to Coca-Cola is available brain time (time when the brain is available)

Shitty translation but source in French (it has its own article FFS!): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temps_de_cerveau_humain_disponible. He explicitly said that he was not selling to viewers but to advertisers, before the internet became mainstream.