Glossary

From A for AGF Videoforschung to Z for zapping, the most important technical terms in video research are explained here.

ma Radio is an annual survey commissioned by agma on the media usage behaviour of the German-speaking resident population in private households. Until 2020, the AGF participated in parts of ma Radio with a TV question set. Since 2020, the AGF has been collecting the "Potential Study" in collaboration with agof and agma, which together with the AGF's own platform study forms the new external specification "AGF Video Potentials" since 01.01.2022.

ma Intermedia is a file of agma in which the data from the media-specific ma survey tranches and the AGF Panel are combined. With the introduction of the agma partnership model, it was decided in 1987 to merge the television data with the ma survey every year. The data set of ma Intermedia is formed by means of fusions. In the ma Intermedia data set, the media of television, magazines, daily newspapers, movie theaters, radio and billboards can be counted on the basis of the advertising medium contact chance. The advertising medium contact chance represents the currency convention for intermedia comparison counts adopted by agma.

Maintenance is a method for completing missing data, due to survey questions not being answered. It is applied in the AGF Panel to fill in missing answers from the recruitment interviews. The maintenance approach corresponds to the injection performed after the annual Structural Survey.

Market media analyses are studies that collect information on both consumer behaviour and media use in a single-source survey. They allow direct statements to be made about the buying behaviour taking into account the media usage behaviour.

Market share is the share in TV Total viewing participation taken up by the average viewing participation of the selected analysis elements. The underlying viewing participation associated with the various analysis elements has to be used to calculate the average market share of analysis elements. It is prohibited to calculate averages directly via market shares.

The market standard describes the universe used as well as the incidences of use included as part of evaluating AGF data. The TV market standard and video market standard are available. Streaming and convergence analyses can  only be done in the video market standard.

Marketers (streaming) are providers of videos of different publishers. The marketer (streaming) can differ from the marketer (TV). The marketer (streaming) plays an important role in production because it is needed for calibration. In addition, offerings or offering units are assigned to marketers.

Matching is the linking or allocation of two or more contents. In the AGF system, matching takes place in the form of linking TV and streaming content, which takes place in a rule-bound manner via the TV broadcast master and the streaming content master. In addition, matching between census measurement and panellists takes place within the framework of the hybrid measurement approach for streaming measurement.

Matrix represents the distribution of the population to be analysed over two or more characteristics in the combination of their values by intersection. The individual cells represent the distribution of the characteristic values among each other. Matrices are usually used in weightings.

In the context of the AGF, measurement technology refers to the technologies and procedures used to measure video usage behaviour in Germany. For TV usage measurement, a measuring device is connected to each receiver in the households of the AGF panel. The measuring system consists of a display panel, the actual measuring device and a remote control. The persons living in the household log on and off as viewers by pressing a button on the remote control assigned to them. The data recorded to the exact second is stored in the measuring device and transmitted via mobile network to the data processing center. The active measurement of video streaming is carried out via the hybrid measurement approach. Passive streaming measurement takes place via the usage of the measurement router (see AGF Smart Meter).

Media library refers to the entire digital offering of a publisher, including video-on-demand and – if available – livestream.

Media mix refers to the use of different media genres in an advertising campaign. In this case, media genres are optimally combined with a view to achieving the advertising objectives.

The media plan provides an overview of all planned advertising measures within a campaign. For example, it states when different advertisements will be placed in different advertising media.

Media target groups comprise the target groups for advertising measures. They are defined on the basis of socio-demographic, psychological and media-related characteristics. This allows for exact target group determination and therefore the targeted use of media.

The Micro Census is an annual representative household survey of the German Federal Statistical Office to update the census count, under which roughly 1% of the population is surveyed. The AGF Video Potential as an external specification for the AGF Panel is aligned with the Micro Census specifications.

Mid-rolls are online ad spots that play inside the video content. As a sub-category of linear video ads, they never run concurrently with the video content.

HEP is an acronym that stands for Main Income Person. It refers to the person in the household who makes the biggest contribution to the household’s income. The characteristics of the MIP play an important role in the recruitment of panel households, among other things.

Until the end of 2023, the person in the household who contributed the most to the household income was referred to as the Main Income Earner (MIE). Starting from 2024, the person in the household who contributes the most to the household income will be referred to as the Main Income Person (MIP).

The Mobile Panel comprises 10,650 active panellists who have their streaming use measured on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The basic population of the Mobile Panel is the German-speaking population aged 18 and over with internet usage in the last 4 weeks via a smartphone or tablet.

The TV broadcasters alone make decisions in this organizational body. Other market partners such as advertisers and agencies may perform an occasional advisory function. They are not institutionally involved in the decision-making process.

MPEG is an acronym that stands for Motion Picture Expert Group. It refers to a standard for the compression of digital audio and video data. This data compression method involves data losses because the original can no longer be exactly generated after decoding.

The Media Rating Council (MRC) is a US-based non-profit organisation that administers accreditation for media research and rating purposes. AGF is a member of the MRC.

 

In the AGF system, multi-feeds are aggregations of programmes that are broadcast on different sub-feeds. They are usually visible to viewers in the user interface as a package offering (e.g. Bundesliga Soccer Conference) and also for marketing as an offering. This offering form is typically found on the Sky platform.

Every politically independent municipality in Germany is listed in the official statistics with its number of inhabitants, among other things. Based on this number of inhabitants, all municipalities are assigned to their respective size class. The respective municipality size class thus includes all the municipalities assigned to it, as well as the persons living in them. The municipality size classes, politically, are taken into account in the weighting of the AGF panel in the same way as the BIK municipality size classes and can be evaluated in the AGF evaluation software. Other categorisations widely used in market research for geographical market segmentation in Germany are, for example, the Nielsen areas or Nielsen agglomerations.   

1 - under 2,000 inhabitants

2 - 2,000 to under 5,000 inhabitants

3 - 5,000 to under 20,000 inhabitants

4 - 20,000 to under 50,000 inhabitants

5 - 50,000 to under 100,000 inhabitants

6 - 100,000 to under 500,000 inhabitants

7 - 500,000 inhabitants and more

7 – 500.000 Einwohner und mehr