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The Nielsen Company has created a product that would enable media companies to track the distribution of their video content on sites like YouTube and MySpace.

Nielsen has partnered with technology firm Digimarc to launch the new service, Nielsen Digital Media Manager, designed to help online video distributors, TV networks, and independent content producers to police where users are posting and watching copyrighted video content.

Set to launch in mid 2008, the new service features two tracking techniques: digital "watermarking" and fingerprinting." "Content owners have lost the ability to track and control the distribution of their content," Dave Harkness, Nielsen's svp, strategy and development told Adweek. "They feel the can no longer control their own destiny."

Nielsen says it has talked to Google and News Corp.'s Fox about the new service. The company also plans to offer the service to NBC Universal or the Discovery Channel along with social networks that host video content.

"We are in a unique position to offer a comprehensive, practical solution," Harkness said. "The problem that other companies have is they need the content ahead of time [to implement their tracking]. For Nielsen, that's no problem at all."