The Nielsen Company and Digimarc Corporation launch 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. 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% 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. The companies expect these new solutions to be available in mid 2008.

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.

Under the agreement, 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 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

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

• Content owners can leverage the popularity of new media distribution channels by identifying what content is being shared, viewed, mashed up or accessed. This intelligence enables content owners to make meaningful decisions on what content to allow or disallow on such sites. At the same time, they can decide where and how to distribute content while developing new revenue streams, and how to measure the effectiveness of associated marketing campaigns.
• Content distributors, including 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.
• Consumers will enjoy expanded access to related goods, services and communities and be able to more easily find video content when they want it, regardless of format or operating system.