COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS
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.