Survey: Content Owners at Risk Sans Tracking Tool
Bottom Lines Could Be Damaged Unless Monitoring, Measuring Occur
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 11/19/2007 2:13:00 AM
More than 80% of media and entertainment executives believe that broadcast and Internet-video content owners are at risk of damaging their bottom lines if they don’t employ technology to track, monitor and measure content, according to a survey released Monday by Myers Publishing and Teletrax.
Some 55% of executives polled favored eliminating digital-rights management and allowing content to be distributed freely, as long as “tagging” and tracking of the material is conducted through digital watermarking and fingerprinting technologies.
Those are among the highlights of the Digital Video Barometer Executive Survey, released Monday by Myers Publishing and Teletrax, the global broadcast intelligence company. Nearly 300 media and entertainment industry executives responded to the online survey, commissioned by Teletrax and conducted in September by Myers' survey research team.
Most of the media and entertainment executives surveyed said that content owners should place a high priority on implementing technology tools for tracking, monitoring and measuring Internet video content [72%] and broadcast video content [62%]. Large majorities of the executives polled said watermarking or fingerprinting technologies are fairly or highly useful for video content protection [71%], contract compliance [66%], and asset management [58%].
The survey results also emphasized the heightened importance of tracking systems as video increasingly migrates from television to the Internet. In the survey, 64% of respondents said it is fairly or highly important for copyright content owners to have a technology or system that could take an inventory of all its copyrighted content that is contained on social networking sites at any one time.
However, only 40% of the media and entertainment executives polled said they are supportive of Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube/Google for copyright infringement.
Respondents were generally bullish on the growth of Internet video content and the shift in consumption of video content from TV to the Internet. Four in five of the executives polled said that at least 40%, if not a greater proportion, of video content will be consumed on the Internet [versus TV] in 2012. However, only 26% of respondents said that video content will be distributed freely, without content owners mandating royalties paid, by 2012.
Results of the inaugural Digital Video Barometer Executive Survey are available online at www.teletrax.tv. Highlights of the Survey and an associated research white paper, will be presented by Myers and Winkler at a Myers Publishing Breakfast event, “Economics of the New Television Marketplace,” on Nov. 27 in New York.
The event, lead-sponsored by Teletrax, will include a panel discussion moderated by Jack Myers and featuring speakers: Tim Armstrong, president of advertising and commerce, North America, for Google; George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer for NBC Universal; Sarah Fay, CEO of Carat and Isobar US; and David Levy, president of Turner Sports and Turner Entertainment Sales and Marketing.
