FAQ

Vodafone serves a total of around 13.5 million households with TV products, making it the largest TV provider in Germany. From this total, AEOS measures the TV usage of over one million households. These are households equipped with the Vodafone Giga TV (cable box), the Giga TV Net Box (IP Internet), the Giga TV App (mobile) and / or the Apple TV (Apple Box) and who have consented to data sharing.

There are a total of around 39 million TV households in Germany - the ratio between the number of households measured and the number of households actually present is accordingly 1:39. As this is a very high and valid database, we do no extrapolation.

From a subset of the measured households, we have built a new TV viewer dashboard for Germany together with Vodafone. This is representative of households with connected devices which now corresponds to a large proportion of German households. This subset can be used for extrapolations, but we clearly prefer to work with "big & smart data". In the next step, we will therefore also combine the viewer dashboard and overall measurement, i.e. we will use the viewer dashboard data to validate and calibrate the large volume of our data.

There is a natural fluctuation, as customers quit, move away, die, and new customers join as well. We are also working continuously to include further box types in the measurement, so that there is gradual growth at certain intervals. And - this is also obvious - not every household watches TV every day, so that a distinction can then be made once again between basically measured HH and active HH, we name this the “active, gliding potential”.

The focus of AEOS is on the measurement, analysis and planning of TV campaigns - see also the next question and answer. By measuring the end devices, however, AEOS also has access to app data located in the GigaTV world, which enables us to report reliable results, for example, incremental reach data between linear TV and streaming services.  Data partnerships such as with DAZN also enable AEOS to obtain further, relevant insights into advertising pressure from a streaming platform that is relevant in the market.  Due to the high number of cases, the transparency and the speed, AEOS creates real added value for advertisers, agencies, large and small TV stations, management consultancies as well as media auditors.

We currently measure the usage of 326 stations that are distributed via the networks of Vodafone Germany. For this purpose, we evaluate so-called "log files" that are taken anonymously from the end devices in compliance with the German Data Protection Act (DSGVO) to be able to analyze usage to the second. Accordingly, various indicators of channel usage and -content can be reported, for example, average usage time, marketshare, etc.For currently 69 of these TV stations, we also analyze the actual TV signal frame by frame - which means that for these stations, in addition to the second-by-second reach of the content, we can also show allrelevant KPIs for any type of advertising, down to the second.

The data is provided daily via the AEOS Cockpit from Monday to Sunday from about 09:30h - and always up-to-date for the respective previous day. In addition, our data can be obtained via reporting (pdf, Excel, CSV, json) and API on request.

We have prepared a handout for all KPIs that are listed in our cockpit and that we work with. You can find it here. Feel free to contact us if you would like us to discuss the KPI with you in a very personal meeting.

In general, an analysis of TV data is possible retroactively until the beginning of July 2021, the start of AEOS in Germany. We have been measuring pre/post splits automatically since December 2022. However, for special advertising forms prior to Dec 22, we can still work with timestamps to analyze the performance.

Our data analysts screen all usage profiles and update them every month, so we always work with the latest usage interests of TV households. This enables AEOS to make statements about viewing time, viewing habits, interests and advertising affinities. As a result, these user profiles can be assigned to a phase of life, such as Family with Kids, Seniors, Workers, etc.. TV is still a mass medium, but our user profiles allow individual target groups to be addressed more specifically - THE way to invest in the right reach and spread gains.

Together with Vodafone and other partners, we have set up a new TV viewer dashboard for Germany, which can be used to examine a subset of the measured households in terms of their TV usage, also according to socio-demographic criteria.

The households - currently around 4,000 with around 8,000 panelists - were surveyed for this purpose on the basis of existing, recognized market standards and weighted at cell level by Innofact's experts in order to establish representation for households with a TV set with return channel capability. In parallel, recruiting continues in the background to grow to10,000 households with more than 20,000 panelists by the end of the year.

Before integrating the new panelists, a quality check and re-weighting of the total quantity will of course take place. In order to operate the viewer dashboard in a stable and representative manner we at AEOS are working with experts from Vodafone, CINT and Innofact on continuous development.

With the Vodafone TV viewer dashboard we pursue several goals:

In principle, AEOS has no influence on the distribution of the end devices - all back-channel capable end devices from theVodafone universe are simply measured, for which the measurement and data transfer was approved. However, we can see via the DSGVO-compliant link that we are distributed analogously to the given population densities - few end devices in low-population regions, many devices in medium-sized and large cities in all federal states. And last "imbalances" we could compensate by calibrating on household level.

In principle, we can report the measured households at five-digit zip code level. If there are fewer than 30 devices in a zip code cell, we aggregate them at three-digit zip code level. However, this is only the case for 4% of the 8.181 zip codes of Germany.

The TV broadcasters classify a TV program in the jointly adopted, existing categories. The classification at AEOS therefore corresponds to the existing market standard.

As can be read in the second answer above we work with a so-called "dynamic active potential", i.e. the number of measured devices is subject to slight fluctuations over time. Since this potential provides the basis for the calculation slight changes occur at different times in identical calculations. However, since these relate to all calculations the relations of the values to each other remain identical.

The logic of the XRP is the same as that of the GRP, i.e.: net reach x OTS. The difference between these two KPIs lies only in the method (viewer dashboard vs total universe, extrapolation vs actual RCH). There is no weighting based on the spot length when calculating the reach. Every device that has come into contact with the spot (after a 5 sec. threshold) is added to the reach.  The advantages of the XRP are obvious - it has been created in analogy to the digital campaign world: directly comparable with digital campaigns, since it is collected on a device-related basis and being based on a maximally high number of cases as well as not being calculated on average ad block reaches but on the exact position in an advertising block.

Basically, the focus is on the recording of classic advertising units. However, our AI-based, self-developed software can also recognize, analyze and report sponsoring or product placements. Please contact us before starting a campaign!

With Apollo a TV campaign can be planned ex ante - with a wide variety of specifications. Whether it's a question of reach, environment or conversion optimization the algorithm calculates the optimum combination of channels, times and commercial breaks on the basis of a maximum number of cases in order to achieve the maximum result. Feel free to contact us at any time and we will give you further insights.