AGF Forum 2024: “Total Video: Advertising, impact, transparency”

Frankfurt, September 12, 2024. The AGF Forum 2024 took yesterday place in the Union Halle in Frankfurt am Main with more than 300 representatives of the media industry. This year's programme “Total Video: Advertising, Impact, Transparency” offered a variety of current industry topics, which were presented and discussed by high-calibre speakers. In addition to insights into current AGF projects and collaborations, the event focussed on the topics of transparency and responsibility in the video market.

“This year's forum was extremely diverse and more political than ever before. The outlooks, discussions and pleas on current industry topics show the special importance that research and media currently have and the responsibility this entails,” says Kerstin Niederauer-Kopf, CEO of AGF Videoforschung GmbH.

In her opening speech, Niederauer-Kopf strongly emphasized the central role of uniform standards for the media industry. “Standards create the conditions for diversity, refinancing, transparency and comparability. This is the foundation for innovation and competition,” said Niederauer-Kopf. “Standards are therefore an essential cornerstone of a vibrant and diverse media world.” In addition to the importance of standards, Niederauer-Kopf also addressed the responsibility of the media industry in times of growing threats to freedom of expression and media diversity. “Democracy is not a skin cream that we can simply apply in the morning or evening. The media make an essential contribution to this and we must actively protect democracy. There is no alternative to democracy,” explained Niederauer-Kopf.

In their panel discussion, Tatjana Damgaard (Managing Partner GroupM Germany), Malte Hildebrandt (Managing Director Screenforce), Jan Lorbach (Senior Director Strategic Insights GfK) and Martina Vollbehr (Managing Director Pilot) combined exciting insights from the research results of their studies on social developments with trends on the end device market and the challenges for content creators.

In his keynote speech entitled “Why AI can't do everything - a reality check on generative artificial intelligence”, Prof. Thomas Köhler highlighted the potential and limits of AI. Sonja Schwetje (Program Managing Director ntv & Editor-in-Chief RTL News), Prof. Dr. Lisa-Charlotte Wolter (Professor Media & Marketing IU Hamburg) and Manfred Kluge (Co-Founder Initiative 18 & Chairman DACH Omnicom Media Group) also discussed AI as a challenge between fake news and sustainability. “The World Economic Forum describes the spread of disinformation as the greatest short-term risk worldwide. This is why it is so important to raise awareness of the responsibility for media diversity in our industry. Because freedom needs the whole picture. Media diversity protects democracy,” says Kluge.

Norman Wagner, Managing Director of Utiq, used the example of the classic fairytale “The Emperor's New Clothes” to explain how important it is to critically question supposed digital truths and demand genuine transparency. The panel discussion between Maike Abel (Digital & Corporate Marketing Director Nestlé and Deputy Chair of the OWM), Guido Modenbach (EVP Research, Analytics & Consulting Seven.One Entertainment Group), Klaus-Peter Schulz (Managing Director of Die Mediaagenturen), Uwe Storch (Head of Media Ferrero and Chair of the OWM) and Kerstin-Niederauer-Kopf provided an exciting conclusion to the event.