The Nielsen Co. and Digimarc Corp. announced a new service—Nielsen Digital Media Manager—that will enable media companies, social networks, peer-to-peer services and user generated content sites to monitor and manage the distribution of media content across the Internet.
The companies expect these new solutions to be available in mid 2008.
Nielsen Digital Media Manager will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting to establish an industry-wide rules-based solution to copyright security and to assure copyright compliance. By providing a more reliable way to track content, the service will help clients realize the value of their digital content, promote the expansion of Internet-distributed media and facilitate a number of revenue streams, including ad-pairing, e-commerce, royalty reporting and others.
Nielsen already uses digital watermarking to encode 95 percent of national television programming for its television ratings service, and the new service will focus initially on the online distribution of television content in the U.S.
Nielsen and Digimarc also plan to work with the media industry to digitally watermark DVD’s, movies, music, video games and other content in subsequent phases of the rollout of the new media identification and management services.
“We believe these services will stimulate the growth of online video distribution, to the benefit of consumers, content providers and distributors,” said David Calhoun, chairman and CEO of the Nielsen Company. “Until now, the lack of an independent, industry-accepted identification and tracking service has limited the transactions that allow the delivery of media content over the Internet. Now with our new media identification and management services unique ability to identify content throughout the Internet, both content providers and distributors can protect and monetize the value of online media.”
Under the agreement, Nielsen and Digimarc will work together to develop this service and each will contribute intellectual property and technological expertise. Digimarc, based in Beaverton, Ore., is licensing digital watermarking patents from its extensive patent portfolio to Nielsen for these new solutions and providing development support. The solutions will take advantage of Nielsen’s extensive expertise in digital watermarking and fingerprinting technologies, its extensive network and systems infrastructure and its capabilities for supporting media and advertising companies.
With the new Nielsen Digital Media Manager, content owners can leverage the popularity of new media distribution channels by identifying what content is being shared, viewed, mashed up or accessed. Content distributors, including social networks, user generated content site operators and aggregators, can ensure the legitimacy of content shared on their sites.
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