The marketing minds at Choice Hotels International Inc., which owns Comfort Inn and Sleep Inn, used to figure that ABC’s “Good Morning America” was the primo spot for advertising to would-be travelers.

Now they also like reruns of “Big Cat Diary” on Animal Planet, where they can reach a similar audience for a lot less.

In getting to that conclusion, they are taking a page out of digital advertising’s book, using new sets of data to help pinpoint viewers with much greater specificity than the traditional demographic categories of age and gender. A new crop of tools from companies such as Simulmedia Inc., Nielsen Holdings NV, Rentrak Corp. and TiVo Inc. has sprung up to apply the lessons of “Big Data” to television.

As the rise of digital and mobile advertising threatens to yank ad dollars from the big cable companies and broadcasters, networks and marketers hope the new technologies will have the ability to leverage huge databases on what products consumers buy and which obscure shows they watch, making the television ad landscape more like the online one.

“If you can do this now with television, you prevent people from moving to what they consider to be a more measurable approach,” said David Poltrack, chief research officer for broadcaster CBS Corp.