A Coding Standard to Track Media Assets Is Proposed

For advertisers and media companies, keeping track and organizing the tonnage of media assets — from video clips to commercials — can be a challenge, particularly online. On Thursday, a media industry organization announced the findings of a two-year study that uses a coding system to monitor these assets, similar to how U.P.C. labels track consumer products from shipping to purchase.

The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, the industry group, advocated for the widespread adoption of the new system at an event in New York, saying it would allow media companies to earn additional billions of dollars in revenue while saving millions of dollars on back-end processing systems currently used to track media.

Companies that tag their ads and their videos with these standardized codes will also be better able to determine where, when and how the content is viewed.

Some of the companies involved in the test phase include NBCUniversal Media, Viacom, Turner Broadcasting, Starcom MediaVest Group, ESPN, Hulu, ABC, Nielsen, Arbitron and comScore.

“Brands, advertisers and networks produce more content than ever but, unfortunately, the industry still lacks the ability to accurately identify and track assets across all distribution points,” said Jane Clarke, the managing director for the coalition in a statement.

Janice Finkel-Greene, the executive vice president of buying analytics at MagnaGlobal, said the coding system would also help advertisers manage the sheer amount of data available to them from sources like social media and research companies like Nielsen.

“We wind up with all of this wonderful data but we have difficulty putting it together,” Ms. Finkel-Greene said.

The coding system would help advertisers more precisely tailor ads to a particular audience, she added. The system would also help companies automate what can be a haphazard often manual process of coding content.

Such a system would allow media companies “to spend less time putting the data together and more time doing analysis,” Ms. Finkel-Greene said.

Charles Kennedy, a senior vice president of research at ABC, said the media industry had been “hampered by the labor intensity and the complexity” of keeping track of digital media. Using a standardized coding system would help the company show the right ads to the right people, especially those who view content online. If a consumer watches an ABC show days after it has aired on television, ABC would be able to show the viewer updated ads — and profit off the ad that is shown.

“It will help us move into the world where we have dynamic ad insertion,” Mr. Kennedy said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the organization proposing a new way to track and monitor media assets. It is the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, not the Coalition for Media Management.

Internet Radio Royalty Bill Would Change Rate-Setting Standard

They are part of a federal judicial standard that is the basis of how royalty rates are set for Internet radio services like Pandora Media. For years, however, online services have complained that the standard is unfair, and results in burdensome rates that are much higher than those paid by satellite radio.

The battle flared up again on Friday with a new Congressional bill, the Internet Radio Fairness Act. Introduced in the House by Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, and Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, the bill would move so-called noninteractive online radio services like Pandora and Clear Channel Communications’ iHeartRadio app from the “willing buyer, willing seller” standard to the one used to determine rates for Sirius XM Radio.

That model would let the panel of federal judges that set the rates consider evidence both on the value of the music and on the effect the royalty rate would have on the industry over all. Pandora and its supporters believe that standard would yield lower rates.

On the other side of the issue are record labels and artists, who believe that the existing rates are fair and accuse Pandora and others of wanting to deprive copyright holders of the income they deserve.

Pandora pays a fraction of a cent each time a user listens to a song, and the total must be a minimum of 25 percent of its annual revenue; last year it paid about half its revenue to labels and performers. Sirius’s current rate is 8 percent. (Both kinds of services also pay separate royalties to songwriters and publishers.)

Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder, took to his company’s blog to say that the bill is long overdue. “The anti-Internet bias in federal law is nothing short of absurd,” he wrote.

Pandora’s position is supported by other digital services and by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Ted Kalo, executive director of the MusicFirst coalition, which represents many labels and artists, on Friday defended the current rates and said that the promised changes would unfairly benefit services like Pandora.

“There’s nothing fair about pampering Pandora, with its $1.8 billion market cap, at the expense of music creators,” Mr. Kalo said in a statement. “Going from a fair market, ‘willing buyer, willing seller,’ rate to a government-mandated subsidy will break the backs of artists, while Pandora executives pad their pockets.”

Throughout the music industry there is a wide belief that Pandora could solve its financial problems — the company, which went public a year ago, has never turned an annual profit — by simply selling more ads.

The issue is expected to be deliberated after the national elections in November, and probably into the spring.

Internet Radio Royalty Bill Would Change Rate-Setting Standard

They are part of a federal judicial standard that is the basis of how royalty rates are set for Internet radio services like Pandora Media. For years, however, online services have complained that the standard is unfair, and results in burdensome rates that are much higher than those paid by satellite radio.

The battle flared up again on Friday with a new Congressional bill, the Internet Radio Fairness Act. Introduced in the House by Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, and Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, the bill would move so-called noninteractive online radio services like Pandora and Clear Channel Communications’ iHeartRadio app from the “willing buyer, willing seller” standard to the one used to determine rates for Sirius XM Radio.

That model would let the panel of federal judges that set the rates consider evidence both on the value of the music and on the effect the royalty rate would have on the industry over all. Pandora and its supporters believe that standard would yield lower rates.

On the other side of the issue are record labels and artists, who believe that the existing rates are fair and accuse Pandora and others of wanting to deprive copyright holders of the income they deserve.

Pandora pays a fraction of a cent each time a user listens to a song, and the total must be a minimum of 25 percent of its annual revenue; last year it paid about half its revenue to labels and performers. Sirius’s current rate is 8 percent. (Both kinds of services also pay separate royalties to songwriters and publishers.)

Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder, took to his company’s blog to say that the bill is long overdue. “The anti-Internet bias in federal law is nothing short of absurd,” he wrote.

Pandora’s position is supported by other digital services and by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Ted Kalo, executive director of the MusicFirst coalition, which represents many labels and artists, on Friday defended the current rates and said that the promised changes would unfairly benefit services like Pandora.

“There’s nothing fair about pampering Pandora, with its $1.8 billion market cap, at the expense of music creators,” Mr. Kalo said in a statement. “Going from a fair market, ‘willing buyer, willing seller,’ rate to a government-mandated subsidy will break the backs of artists, while Pandora executives pad their pockets.”

Throughout the music industry there is a wide belief that Pandora could solve its financial problems — the company, which went public a year ago, has never turned an annual profit — by simply selling more ads.

The issue is expected to be deliberated after the national elections in November, and probably into the spring.