AGF Videoforschung commissioned Nielsen to measure online video content and uses a privacy-safe hybrid measurement approach. This consists of the desktop panel, the mobile panel, and a census measurement for the publishers participating in the measurement.

For the census measurement, the content provider must implement a measurement library (SDK - Software Development Kit) in the corresponding players which measures the usage and transmits these data to Nielsen. Measurement on panellists' devices is carried out using measurement software developed by Nielsen (on-device meter), which records panellists' video usage and also transmits it to Nielsen.

The hybrid measurement can both measure the complete retrieval numbers for a piece of video content and also monitor information about what target groups used the corresponding content. The depth of data in pure web analytics software would not be sufficient for this purpose.

Calibration

The usage levels of panel measurement do not approach those of census measurement, despite population-representativeness and weighting. For instance, census data also includes usage in workplaces, which the panel does not depict. For this reason AGF Videoforschung, together with its service provider ANKORDATA, has developed an elaborate statistical process to close the usage gap: calibration. This adjusts the views and net reach values present in the weighted video streaming panel to match the level of the census measurement, using statistical methods.