Metrics

All Metrics that can be retrieved and queried from the Connect API are grouped by Providers and Dimensions. These are central concepts that you need to understand when working with the API.

Providers

We have different ways of collecting data from our panelists and from content tracking. Some are collected when a user registers as a Panelist (e.g. gender), some are collected over time by asking profiling questions to the panelist (e.g. Do you own a car?), some are automatically collected when the actual content match occurs (e.g. which type of device was used when accessing the content) and some can be sent as parameters in the tracking URL.

The different data is grouped in providers, which represents the way the data was collected.

Providers are uniquely identified by their name. Currently, we have five different providers available (with further providers likely to be added over time):

• Basic Profiling - available for all panelists.
• Global Questions - may be available for a panelist.
• User Agent - data about the device and browser that a panelist used when a match was registered.
• Custom Metrics - data that was provided in the tracking request.
• Match Data - data such as channel and referrer. By default they will all be included, but you can specify which ones you want as well.

Each provider collects data for different dimensions.

Dimensions

A dimension represents a type of metric (you can think of them as questions). Examples of dimensions are:

• Country of residence
• Gender
• Ages of children
• Device type (used when the match occurred)
• Household income
• Access to a car

Data Types

Dimension data types can be any one of the following:

• Category - fixed set of possible values (e.g. what is your marital status? Married, single, etc.)
• Numeric - free number (e.g. how many children do you have?)
• Text - free text (e.g. what suburb do you live in?)
• DateTime - free date (e.g. when were you born?)

Cardinality & Possible Values

Some dimensions only have one single answer (e.g. Country of residence), while others may have multiple answers (e.g. Ages of children), we refer to this as cardinality.

Dimensions may also have a fixed set of possible answers (e.g. Gender), while others may have an unspecified set of answers. Some are answered with numbers (e.g. Ages of children) while some are of type Yes/No (e.g. Do you own a car?) etc.

For the dimensions that have a fixed number of available answers, you can query the API to get the list of possible answers.

Each dimension is tied to one provider. When working with dimensions in the Connect API, they are referenced by its provider and a unique number. So "Country of residence" is referenced by BasicProfiling:[9]

The actual answers (or values) to the dimensions are called metrics.

Metrics

A metric is the actual value collected. The number 23 can be a metric. In isolation that number doesn't make sense unless its tied to a dimension. If the dimension is "Age" for example, then that metric becomes understandable.

When accessing the Connect API you will receive metrics for both panelists and matches. Some metrics will contain the actual answer in clear text, while some will have a Variable ID that identifies one of the possible answers.

Specifying dimensions in the API

When accessing endpoints in the API that accept dimensions as a query parameter (typically the PanelistMatch requests, where you want to specify which type of metrics you want), the dimensions should be specified in the following format:

ProviderName1 : [Comma separated list of dimension IDs] , ProviderName2 : [Comma separated list of dimension IDs] , ...

So if you would like to query "Age", "Gender" (from Basic Profiling), "DeviceType" (from User Agent) and "Ages of children" (from Global Questions) the query parameter should be written as:

BasicProfiling:[0,2],UserAgent:[7],GlobalQuestions:[14]