High-speed watermarking protects the content of some of the world’s largest media and entertainment brands. This universal, cost-effective identification and enforcement solution is arguably underutilised by the industry at large. We delve into how it works and why implementing watermarking can deliver quick, effective results and save you revenue.
What is watermarking?
Watermarking is a technology that identifies the origins of illegally redistributed content. A watermark is a virtually imperceptible mark applied to the stream or video as part of the distribution. When pirated content has been located through a monitoring service, the watermark payload can then be extracted and analysed by the content security provider. This process allows them to trace the content back to its original source, such as a specific user, device, or distribution channel. For example, a watermark will tell you exactly where re-streaming services are sourcing their content and can quickly identify whether stolen content came from one of your platforms or from a third-party.
How does watermarking work?
There are two primary use cases/implementations for watermarking: subscriber watermarking and distribution watermarking.
Subscriber watermarking quickly identifies the sources of piracy, allowing for immediate intervention. By embedding watermarks at the subscriber level, it becomes possible to trace which specific subscriptions are being exploited to illegally re-stream content. Once these accounts are pinpointed, you can promptly revoke access and disable the pirated content.
Distribution watermarking works to secure vulnerabilities that may have arisen without your awareness as you expand your content distribution. It helps track the origin of piracy across your entire distribution network. Leveraging proprietary technology, distribution watermarks are applied to content distributed by partners, with each watermark uniquely identifying the distribution channel and seamlessly integrating into your content. Analysing these watermarks allows for more precise targeting of security measures, identifying which channels are suffering from content re-streaming and enabling discussions on addressing vulnerabilities.
How can watermarking save you revenue?
Watermarking is effective in saving revenue for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it’s fast—enabling you to swiftly identify the source of piracy and protect all types of content, including live sports, where every second matters. Secondly, watermarking is easy to implement, often with minimal infrastructure investment required. In most cases, it can be deployed in just a matter of days, providing a quick and efficient solution to combat piracy.
Thirdly, different types of watermarking can be used simultaneously to provide a tailored solution, and multi-layered security. This means that you can discover not only the platform responsible for the piracy but also the specific subscription that is being re-streamed, allowing you to implement enforcement measures quickly to protect your investments. Wherever piracy is hitting, you’ve got it covered with unrivalled insights into the piracy landscape.
Finally, watermarking is ultimately a proven solution; tens of millions of devices and apps globally use solutions such as those provided by FMTS to safeguard their revenue.
Why does FMTS lead the way in watermarking?
FMTS watermarking is pioneering in its speed, scalability and adaptability. As the world's leading watermarking vendor in the lightning-fast world of live sports, FMTS protects some of the most valuable content for the world's best-known brands. Our swift, secure solution protects the most widely viewed content and is available for on-demand, live or linear content.
Whatever your distribution model, there’s a FMTS watermarking solution for you. Whether you’re providing OTT services, or distributing via a traditional set-top box – or a hybrid of both – FMTS watermarking fits seamlessly into your distribution workflows, enabling efficient content protection across all your platforms.
Watermarking is a highly effective means of identification of piracy sources, but this can only happen once pirated material has been located. First-class identification requires first-class location services, and FMTS monitoring is second-to-none. Designed to quickly find your stolen content anywhere in the digital landscape, our monitoring systems have been honed over two decades to deliver highly scalable, AI-driven, automated solutions. Running 24x7x365, our monitoring enables comprehensive coverage wherever you are in the world.
Unlike many vendors, FMTS offers two types of subscriber watermarking: client and server-based. With decades of experience in content protection, FMTS is uniquely positioned to deliver a tailored watermarking solution that meets your needs.
Watermarking in action
FMTS clients utilise watermarking to great success around the world, across all content types. One such client needed to protect not only exclusive sports events, but Hollywood movies and premium scripted content too. With the help of FMTS watermarking for OTT and set-top-box (STB), for live content, linear channels and video-on-demand (VOD), they were able to pinpoint the source of content theft, shut the associated accounts, and crucially to analyse trends in illegal consumption of their content as a whole. Combined with leading enforcement methods, they were able to achieve a 20% reduction in piracy.
Read the case study on this pay TV operator here
Another customer, a content owner with high-octane live sports content worth billions, needed a robust, rapid solution to protect the value of their content. A key challenge was the complexity of the content being distributed across multiple platforms, countries, broadcasters and licensees. Distribution watermarking was employed to identify sources of leaks - combined with global content monitoring and enforcement, to quickly detect and disable illegal streams and guide audiences to legal sources.
Read the case study on this live sports content owner here
Want to find out more about watermarking?
Contact the FMTS team today to learn how we can help.
