Nielsen, Digimarc Launch Digital Media Manager

The Nielsen Co. and Digimarc Corp. on Wednesday unveiled 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.

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, the companies said. They said by providing a more reliable way to track content, the service will help clients promote the expansion of Internet-distributed media and facilitate revenue streams, including ad-pairing, e-commerce and royalty reporting.

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 United States. The companies expect these new solutions to be available in mid 2008.

Nielsen and Digimarc said they also plan to work with the media industry to digitally watermark DVDs, movies, music, video games and other content in subsequent phases of the roll-out 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 Co.

Nielsen and Digimarc will work together to develop this service and each will contribute intellectual property and technological expertise. Digimarc is licensing digital watermarking patents from its patent portfolio to Nielsen for these new products and providing development support. The solutions will take advantage of Nielsen’s expertise in digital watermarking and fingerprinting technologies, its extensive network and systems infrastructure and its capabilities for supporting media and advertising companies, the companies said.

Digimarc Corp. www.digimarc.com

Nielsen Co. www.nielsen.com

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