Launched this week, the Nielsen Media Manager is intended to allow content owners to enforce copyright and monetize online video. The product has been developed by two top-tier international media companies: the Oregon-based Digimarc Corp. and the Nielsen Company, headquartered in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and New York.

The media manager uses Digimarc's patented watermarking technologies and Nielsen's content-monitoring expertise, global network and systems infrastructure, as well as Nielsen's relationships with media and advertising companies.

Targeting media companies, social networks, peer-to-peer services and user-generated content sites, the media-management service will monitor content distribution using digital watermarking and fingerprinting. The service has a dual purpose: Content owners will be able to identify how their property is being shared, viewed and accessed. Content providers, including community and social Web sites, will use the service to ensure the legitimacy of the content they host.

Initially, the service will focus on the online distribution of U.S. television content. Later, Nielsen and Digimarc will expand to the entire media industry, digitally watermarking DVDs, movies, music and video-game content.

The two companies say the media manager will help online video grow. They see this growth as having been hampered by the current lack of an independent, industry-accepted identification and tracking service. Creators of the Nielsen Media Manager aim to become the industry standard by helping clients produce revenue through ad-pairing, e-commerce and royalty reporting.