IMPROVED AUDITING

Media content of all types — television, music, movies, etc. — continues to proliferate and make its way onto many new consumer devices as well as many sites across the internet. This creates not only a huge challenge for content owners and distributors of media assets, but also challenges companies and organizations who are relied upon for tracking and reporting media consumption and providing detailed audit reports to ensure fair compensation. Digital watermarking applications for auditing give all members within the value chain the ability to verify usage to support highly accurate billing and contract enforcement.

HOW IT WORKS

In a basic auditing application, content owners and distributors can embed unique digital watermarks which serve as an identifier for each licensed asset. The identifier remains embedded in the asset and is conveyed into any licensee compositions that include all or part of the original asset. An auditing application can then quickly and automatically determine the usage of the owner’s assets from any composition.

IMPROVED CONFIDENCE

Auditing composite media gives an owner confidence in licensee usage reports and provides incentive for accurate reporting. In some cases, content auditing can replace licensee-generated usage reports altogether.

Benefits of digital watermarking for improved auditing include…

• Make each piece of asset unique and identifiable
• Irrefutable confirmation of content usage and reporting
• Automatic billing mechanism and invoicing