FAQ

Everything you always wanted to know about AGF Videoforschung ...

No, aside from a few incentives (gifts) there is no payment for panel households. This is to avoid distortions and conditioning in usage.

The identity of households in the AGF Panel is subject to strict confidentiality and is known to just a few employees at GfK SE. Neither AGF nor the TV broadcasters nor any licensees know the identity of the households involved.

No, recruitment is based on random sampling. This means every private TV or Streaming household in Germany with a German-speaking main income person has the same chance of being recruited for the AGF Panel. Participation is voluntary.

No, every form of usage is “correct” in the AGF Panel as long as your normal usage behavior is not consciously modified.

Representativeness is a matter of structural equality between the sample and the population. It is ensured by comparing the panel to the external specifications. The sample size of 5,400 households in the AGF panel with GfK is more than adequate to provide significant results with sufficiently high case numbers for a broad set of target groups.

For the streaming measurement, the case numbers:

  •     Desktop panel with Nielsen with around 10,650 panellists.
  •     Mobile panel with Nielsen with around 10,650 panellists

This means that more than 30,000 panellists report daily from AGF's three panels.

Yes, the AGF measures all broadcasters to the second as they enter the measurement.

The AGF collects data on streaming usage for all services that actively participate in the AGF measurement, including broadcaster media libraries. Streaming measurement requires the active cooperation of a streaming or platform provider due to the installation of the measurement software in the player itself.

Streaming data as well as convergent usage data (TV+streaming) have been available to AGF's contractual partners, for example broadcasters, on a monthly basis since 2017 and on a daily basis since 2019.

Since May 2021, the AGF has published monthly streaming hit lists on its homepage, which also include convergence data (TV+streaming). These answer the question of how much reach a TV programme gains through streaming and which TV format was used most in streaming. Various time periods are accessible for AGF contract partners.