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Philips absorbs Teletrax - September 2, 2008

In an echo of Thomson wholesale transformation from a maker of consumer electronics devices to a provider of digital services, Philips Electronics announced Tuesday that it has assumed 100% ownership of its former joint venture, Teletrax, solidifying the Netherlands-based giant's position in growing business of providing cross-platform content monetizaton tools. With the acquisition, Teletrax will be merged with Philips' Content Identification division, creating a single company that can track content across broadcast, mobile in Internet-based platforms. Among its clients are AP and Reuters Television, NBC News, Major League Baseball and Tribune Co.

"This move accelerates our position to a full end-to-end service and technology partner throughout the lifecycle of audio visual and technological services, for tracking, recognition, monitoring and monetization of content," Philips Content Identification CEO Alex Terpstra said in the press release.

Launched in 2002 in partnership with Medialink Worldwide, Teletrax used digital watermarking technology patented by Philips and Digimarc to track the use of broadcast video content worldwide for advertisers and other content owners. In 2006, Teletrax and Philips formed a new partnership called Mediahedge to track audio and video content on the Internet using Philips' digital fingerprinting technologies. Both businesses will now be combined under Philips Content Identification.

Tuesday's announcement follows similar moves by Philips to bolster its content identification and tracking capabilities. In January, it announced a partnership with Gracenote to combine their respective video and audio fingerprinting technologies to provide better content filtering and monetization capabilities.

For more background on Teletrax's video measurement business, see Teletrax president Andy Nobbs' Q&A with Content Agenda here, and guest column from CEO Laurence Moskowitz here.
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