I produced a show for three seasons with a couple techie friends. Getting paid sponsorship usually requires numbers: demographics, viewership.

The person making the sponsorship decision wants to know that the viewership is in sufficient quantity and the right age range, socio-economic status, etc. to be a fit with their own target market.

You can calculate an ROI with these numbers--an agreed-upon # of viewers = so many active prospects for the company = a certain # of buyers at $price = total revenue. But it's an educated guess until you have a track record.

Sometimes, especially if it was a marketing agency that ran all these decisions for the end customer, I was told if they went ahead it would be because of "goodwill" and not an ROI-based choice.

Local programming did matter. Demonstrating you could get at their target market was key.