Six answers to open IGEM questions about the TV panel

Every year, the Media Science Commission (MWK) checks whether Mediapulse's radio and TV research meets scientific requirements. To this end, it writes a report each time. In the 2013 report, however, a rather sharp tone is noticeable with regard to the new TV research. Admittedly, the MWK states that the new TV panel, which the company Kantar Media Switzerland (KMS) had commissioned Mediapulse to put into operation from 2013, had been "thoroughly functional" in the first half of 2013 despite "some youthful imperfections." That sounds positive. However, it becomes clear from the context: with "functional", only the grade "just sufficient" is meant, because according to MWK, the panel only earned a "sufficient" from August 2013, and then from November onwards, a just "good" was possible. Thanks to the improvements, it formulated "no fundamental reservations" against the data publication, wrote the MWK at the time, which incidentally consists of three scientists: Prof. Dr. Heinz Bonfadelli from the University of Zurich, Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael Schenk, University of Fribourg, and Dr. Walter Hättenschwiler, University of Stuttgart.

Some members of the Interessengemeinschaft elektronischer Medien (IGEM) had read the 2013 MWK report and therefore wanted to know from Mediapulse at the IGEM lunch on May 27, 2015, how it deals with the MWK's points of criticism and which recommendations it has implemented or still intends to implement. The result was a questionnaire of over 20 questions. Mediapulse presented itself to the IGEM members - Foundation Board President Franziska von Weissenfluh, currently also Managing Director ad interim, Chief Research Officer Manuel Dähler and Head of Research Caroline Kellerhals were present. An appearance with a blemish: The three Mediapulse representatives verbosely covered the 40 or so IGEM members present with promises and tables, but the questionnaire itself was "not answered concretely," as IGEM noted in its communiqué afterwards. At the event itself, IGEM President Stephan Küng complained that the presentation had been "a bit too fast". And one participant said that he still had "not a very good feeling about the panel and the data".

It would have been quite possible to answer at least some IGEM questions despite the limited time. Not only from the point of view of Mediapulse, but even from the impartial perspective of MWK. This is because the MWK had also scrutinized the TV panel in 2014 and published another report at the beginning of May 2015. In this report, the overall assessment is now much more positive than in 2013. The MWK attests to Mediapulse that, compared to the previous year, "great progress has been made in most areas" and that the measurement system is now "far more than just functional". "In this sense (...) no reservations can be made regarding publication of the data." However, it went on to hold that "with respect to an ideal state, however, there is still work to be done in the areas indicated."

MWK again addressed the "indicated areas" in detail. This now makes it possible for Werbewoche to not only pick up on the most important MWC criticisms from 2013 here (marked in yellow in the speech bubbles (see PDF link below)), but also to answer the corresponding IGEM questions (green) - always based on the new MWC report 2014 (blue).

Back to the IGEM lunch: During the Q&A session, two concrete answers were given. Someone wanted to know whether the data provided by the new panel at the beginning of 2013 are still at all comparable with today's figures, despite the many adjustments that have been made in the meantime. Caroline Kellerhals first put it into perspective: "That's a question of market convention." Because this determines the tolerance towards methodological or technical changes. "But according to the current market convention, the figures are comparable," she added.

Another person wanted to know what the watermarking test from fall 2013 had shown. At that time, Mediapulse had compared the results of the panel with a second measurement, for which the three stations RTL Germany, Switzerland and Austria each broadcast their own additional signal, an inaudible "watermark" (watermarking), in addition to their normal program signal. This made the three channels, some of which broadcast identical programming (simulcasting), more clearly distinguishable from each other for the KMS audio matching system. A comparison of the two results now showed that the test with watermarking resulted in a small additional use for all three channels, which the normal KMS system had not detected.

Interestingly, however, usage did not decrease for any channel in favor of another. Dähler concluded from this that the KMS system without watermarking must exclude TV usage that it cannot assign to any channel (so-called "unmatched"), but that there is no channel confusion. The differences with and without watermarking are so small that the additional effort with watermarking is not worthwhile, said Dähler. All the more so, as the KMS system also has to exclude less and less unmatched use. This was also confirmed by MWK in its 2014 report: usage that could not be assigned to a station had halved to 1% of total usage in 2014. "This means that watermarking is likely to become less attractive, and not just because of the high costs involved," writes the MWK.

Markus Knöpfli

You can find the six speech bubbles directly in the PDF of the article from the current print edition of Werbewoche (also open to non-subscribers).

A Opinion by Nico Gurtner, Head of Communications at Mediapulse, you will find under this link.