Is watermarking important commercially? To answer this question, we begin by noting that a number of companies have employed watermarking for several years – decades in some cases. We regard this as empirical evidence that watermarking is, indeed, commercially viable. We then address the question more analytically, examining the practicability of some proposed watermarking applications, in light of current research in the field.

We conclude that, although businesses may need to lower their expectations of performance, watermarks can serve most of these functions economically. Advertisement monitoring and audience measurement companies have also used embedded signaling for some time. Both Nielsen Media Research and Competitive Media Reporting (CMR) employ watermarking to provide advertisement verification services and these systems have probably been in use for about 10 years.