• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, September 3, 2008

Royal Philips Electronics has taken full ownership of Teletrax, a firm that monitors and records when and where TV content is aired. It had been a joint venture with Medialink Worldwide since its 2002 launch.

Philips said it plans to meld Teletrax with an existing "content identification" business. Teletrax uses digital watermarking and fingerprinting to track content distribution. It recently has sought to move into the online video and mobile arena.

The service can allow networks--the four major U.S. broadcasters are clients--to ensure that affiliates are running the requisite number of promos for the network. Advertisers can monitor whether their spots ran as planned, and studios can keep tabs on whether syndicated series were preempted or ran outside a contractual boundary.

NBC's in-house marketing arm renewed its deal with the firm in May. At the time, Douglas Holloway, president of NBC network distribution partnerships and affiliate marketing, said that Teletrax is a "cornerstone of our business" and "being able to view all 210 domestic DMAs, it becomes a more powerful tool for us."

Teletrax operates out of offices in New York and Los Angeles in the U.S.