Introduction

The AGB Italia group established AGB Hungary in 1992, now known as Nielsen Audience Measurement. The subsidiary is 100% owned by the international group, The Nielsen Company. The first 200 meters were installed in Budapest by AGB technical staff, while TV audiences in the countryside were measured by the Gallup Institute using diaries. The first national TV viewing statistics were derived from combining the adult samples of the two databases.

In March 1994 AGB Hungary had already been measuring TV audiences according to a national representative sample of 600 households. AGB Hungary was the first in the world to use meters connected to radio-frequency telephones for its measurement, due to the insufficient number of Hungarian households with telephone-lines.

In the autumn of 1997, two national commercial channels – TV2 and RTL Klub – began broadcasting. The competition between TV companies and the fragmentation of the audience made it necessary to enlarge the panel.

From the spring of 1999 the panel consisted of 840 households and 10 years later, from 1 January 2009 we measure based on a panel of 940 households. On 1 April 2009 this number was increased to 1040.

Nielsen Audience Measurement provides services according to contracts with TV companies, advertising agencies, advertisers and production houses. The range of services has become wider and wider, and apart from the viewing data, we provide TV ad-spend data and software for media analysis, planning and campaign post evaluation.