A recent study from Report Buyer says that the applications leveraging content identification technologies such as digital watermarking and fingerprinting within media could surpass US$500 million worldwide by 2012. Key applications include Internet and broadcast content monitoring, metadata association, copyright control, content protection and forensics, and interactive advertising, the report further mentioned.

'Beyond Traditional DRM: Moving to Digital Watermarking & Fingerprinting in Media Monetisation', report noted that non-linear media distribution requires new enabling technologies, beyond traditional encryption-based digital rights management. The authors noticed that the growth of peer-to-peer distribution, social networks, and content piracy is accelerating the need for watermarking and fingerprinting.

The report shows that digital watermarking will also compliment digital rights management (DRM) and conditional access technologies. Companies, such as Cinea, Philips and Verimatrix, are positioning transactional digital watermarking for integration into set-top boxes, to increase content traceability and security.