Media and tech companies have been at each other’s throat (witness Viacom vs. Google) because of pervasive pirated content on the Web. Nielsen’s new service promises to provide better anti-piracy enforcement and make video a more reliable revenue generator.

Ratings giant Nielsen Company has recently partnered with the digital watermarking firm, Digimarc Corporation, to develop a new service – Nielsen Digital Media Manager. This new tool 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. For example, it will let content providers identify the nature of embedded Flash videos and prevent individuals from converting the clips into potentially illegal downloadable versions.

Nielsen Digital Media Manager will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting to establish a more reliable way to track content, provide copyright security and ensure copyright compliance. Result? Clients can 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.

The service will primarily be marketed to companies that create the content they host, such as NBC Universal or the Discovery Channel. But it will also be applicable to sites that host user-made video, such as News Corp.’s MySpace and Google's YouTube.

While a number of smaller companies offer a similar kind of service, the Nielsen advantage is that it already uses digital watermarking to encode 95% of national television programming for its television ratings service. The new service, expected to be available in mid-2008, 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 roll-out of the new media identification and management services.

Nielsen Digital Media Manager will offer many benefits to key players in digital distribution:

·         For content owners, information for better decisions. By identifying what content is being shared, viewed, mashed up or accessed, they can leverage the popularity of new media distribution channels. The can effectively decide what content to allow or disallow on such sites…where and how to distribute content while developing new revenue streams…and how to measure the effectiveness of associated marketing campaigns.

·         For content distributors, assurance. Social networks, user generated content site operators and aggregators can ensure the legitimacy of content shared on their sites. This will enable them to establish new business relationships with the content community, and explore new sources of revenue by extending the reach of advertising and other value-add applications.

·         For consumers, expanded access. They can now access related goods, services and communities and more easily find video content when they want it, regardless of format or operating system.

According to David Calhoun, chairman and CEO of the Nielsen Company, “We believe these services will stimulate the growth of online video distribution, to the benefit of consumers, content providers and distributors. 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.”

Bruce Davis, chairman and CEO of Digimarc, added, “Digital watermarking enables content producers to harness the power of the Internet and expand audiences for entertainment media by identifying media content wherever it goes. The ability to identify content enables accountability, insightful marketing, and enhanced consumer experiences. This initiative can turn a perceived threat to the entertainment industry into a manageable solution that inspires an exciting new era of digital entertainment.”

Digimarc 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 world class capabilities for supporting media and advertising companies around the world.