Eindhoven, July 30^th, 2015 – Civolution, the leading provider of technology and solutions for identifying, managing and monetizing content, today announced the completion of the acquisition by 4C of Teletrax, its TV Analytics and TV Synced Ads business.

The acquisition of the Teletrax business unit and its expertise, technologies, solutions and its extensive TV monitoring infrastructure covering more than 2,100 channels across 76 countries puts 4C in a unique position to deliver value for its clients through social and TV advertising and cross-screen marketing campaigns. The full Teletrax team of approximately 70 employees, located across Eindhoven, The Netherlands, London, New York and Los Angeles merges with similarly sized 4C.

Following the transaction, Sake Bosch, Managing Partner of Civolution’s investor Prime Ventures has joined 4C’s board of directors. Civolution CEO, Alex Terpstra, remains on the Civolution board and also joins 4C where he assumes the position of Managing Director, EMEA. Additionally, Harrie Tholen, SVP Sales & Marketing at Civolution’s NexGuard business, now becomes Managing Director of NexGuard, taking over the day-to-day management.

Since the formation of Civolution as a spin out of Royal Philips Electronics in 2008 it created a portfolio of watermarking and fingerprinting solutions powering a variety of applications. This transaction is the second successful exit of a Civolution business unit, following the December 2014 sale of its Audio Watermarking business to Kantar Media.

The exits of its Audio Watermarking and Teletrax businesses enable Civolution management and its R&D resources to focus entirely on content protection through its NexGuard forensic watermarking business, which continues to provide world-leading technologies and solutions that help media companies fight content piracy, be it in (post-)production, digital cinema, Pay TV,  VOD or OTT streaming.

“This exit of the Teletrax business unit marks a fantastic opportunity for 4C and Teletrax, who share a vision for the future of advertising and offer best-in-class software solutions. Teletrax clients will enjoy 4C’s unique ability to unlock the power of social connections in driving advertising effectiveness, while 4C’s clients gain access to our patented real-time TV analytics and TV synced advertising offerings,” says Alex Terpstra, CEO, Civolution. “This milestone furthermore enables Civolution to be even more laser-focused on its industry leading NexGuard forensic watermarking solutions against the illegal re-distribution of content, the greatest piracy threat facing the content industry today.”

How NexGuard enables the content industry to defend against illegal content re-distribution

To counteract piracy, NexGuard forensic watermarking enables the identification of the individual user or subscriber who has illegally redistributed content. By adding a unique identifier disseminated throughout a piece of media, that content, along with its source, becomes traceable.

NexGuard’s solutions enable digital watermarks to be used to enforce contractual compliance between a content owner and the intended recipient, being a business partner or a consumer. It provides proof of misuse and a link back to the source of a leakage, pinpointing piracy all the way back to its original source by creating a unique, imperceptible and permanent identification for each media asset. This can be achieved either by watermarking individual media file copies, individual OTT streams or the video in each individual Pay TV set-top-box or Smart TV. In the case of live content re-streaming, NexGuard enables the service provider to identify the rogue subscriber and stop the associated illegal stream within minutes.

“NexGuard forensic watermarking represents a powerful and decisive deterrent to pirates where traditional content protection schemes can no longer provide protection. With so much at stake, it is critical for content owners and service providers to react promptly to the illegal use of their content” said Harrie Tholen, Managing Director, NexGuard.