Teletrax, the global video watermarking service, has announced the deployment of a Pan-Asian monitoring network. This will provide news organisations, broadcasters, advertisers and video content owners with a comprehensive monitoring service in the region.

Teletrax claims to be the world's first and only global electronic video monitoring service. It is offered exclusively by Medialink Worldwide. The Teletrax service tracks video content whenever and wherever it is broadcast over the air, on cable or via satellite through a worldwide detection network.

Teletrax will now be monitoring key channels in Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore in addition to its existing extensive European, Middle East and North American coverage.

Under the terms of Teletrax's contract with Reuters, the first news provider to contract with Teletrax to monitor usage of its content, the news agency's bureaus across the world are used to house Teletrax's custom-built video monitoring equipment.

Using Teletrax, owners of video content embed an invisible digital watermark into their material whenever it is edited, broadcast or duplicated. A global network of decoders, or detectors, then capture all incidents of the embedded video being broadcast via satellite, cable or terrestrially and generates tracking reports for the original content owners. The system provides proof of performance reports and alerts copyright owners to any violations.

The extension of Teletrax's global capabilities in Asia adds to the installation programme already underway in fulfillment of major new agreements announced this year with NBC News Channel and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

NBC News Channel uses Teletrax to monitor its news and sponsorship content in key markets in the United States and other stations in Europe. The FCO recently announced that it would begin using Teletrax to assess distribution and usage of its news bulletins by television broadcasters around the world.