Video Creators and Distributors Use Tracking Technology to Increase Asset Value

amp160quotDigital technology has changed the workflow and the workflow processes beyond recognitionquot says Sue Brooks head of content development for international broadcast at The Associated PressThe AP and Reuters are using two technologies fingerprinting and watermarking to find out where their video is going and how it39s being used Jack Myers Media Business Report introduced the Attributor technology in our May 22 column on quotfingerprintingquotFingerprinting used primarily for Webbased content enables a purveyor of content search throughout the Internet to see if its content is being used and whether that use is legitimateWith quotwatermarkingquot the primary emerging video tracking technology a video creator inserts an quotinvisible stampquot to be hidden somewhere in an image or video signal Nielsen has a proprietary technology it calls quotSIGMAquot that hides a watermark in the invisible part of a vertical broadcast signal Microsoft and Hitachi have solutions for video that their equipment and software can handle Other vendors promise to hide watermarks in the luminescence of a videoThe most popular means of tracking broadcast videos comes from a watermarking technology invented by Netherlandsbased Philips and provided by UKbased Teletrax a joint venture between Philips and Medialink Teletrax hides a watermark in every second of video then uses a network of detectors and other monitoring equipment to track signals throughout some 60 countries including all 210 US designated marketing areas DMAs Teletrax has recently enhanced its US operation hiring Peter Winkler as chief marketing officer from PricewaterhouseCoopers Lorelee Wiseman to head west coast sales from Pathfire and Christopher Golden to head east coast sales from The Hollywood ReporterNBC ABC CBS Fox the AP and Reuters all use Teletrax to track their video With surprising unanimity executives talked of the benefits the technology has brought them Reuters has been using the system the longest In 2002 they became the first major client to start using Teletrax Before then they were essentially quotflying blindquot says managing director of television Tony Donovan quotThe only information we would get on our subscribers about how why where and when they used our video was from the customers themselvesquot he told Jack Myers Media Business Report quotWe had no empirical measure of any of those factorsquotWith the new technology Reuters has gotten detailed reports of where videos have been used as well as how much in what order what region and even when and how the video is cut and recut That gives its sales force considerable sway and helps overcome resistance to budgeters who see subscribing to video feeds as an unnecessary cost quotIt moves from a pure pricing discussion to a more value discussion of 39Look how much you39ve used and how much value you39ve gotten out of the product39quot Donovan saysAt the AP Brooks says the tracking has allowed it to slap subscribers39 wrists for using video to which they didn39t have the rights NBC News Channel the network39s video feed service to local stations and international clients pores over reports to find out what it should do more and less ofquotIt does instantly give us a roadmap of how stations use our contentquot says NBC News Channel president Bob Horner quotWe can tell if we need to do more of a certain kind of piece We can find out if we39re onto a large new story or if interest is starting to wanequot NBC was recently able to pull a reporter from Kansas after finding out that stations outside the local area were no longer interested in coverage of a big tornado thereBy scrutinizing Teletrax reports Horner39s team also discovered that stations were often chopping up longer health stories into minutelong rundowns of the day39s top health stories quotWe39ve been able to send them a summary where we write it as a script and give the top medical items of the news todayquot he told Jack Myers Media Business Report in an exclusive interview quotThey were quite appreciative because it saved them quite a large amount of timequot Before it had the technology News Channel had to rely on scripts and logs that provided a far less complete pictureThe next steps for the technology will be to move from broadcast to Internet tracking then to mobile and other devices It could also help figure out peruse charges for video clips something none of the sources interviewed for this column were doing yet Philips has developed a fingerprinting technology it says can be used for tracking digital videos that Jack Myers Media Business Report is told it will begin showing privately this month for evaluationTeletrax can be reached through SVP for sales business development Stephen O39Neill at email SalesteletraxtvDorian Benkoil a regular contributor to Jack Myers Media Business Report is a senior consultant for Teeming Media a digital media business consultancy He can be reached at DorianJackMyerscom Teletrax is a Jack Myers Media Business Report advertiser and is cosponsoring a series of planned Myers industry breakfasts

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Video Creators and Distributors Use Tracking Technology to Increase Asset Value

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Dorian Benkoil

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Video Creators and Distributors Use Tracking Technology to Increase Asset Value

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