Its solutions reduced illegal redistribution of high-value content up to 90%.
Content security specialist Friend MTS has expanded its operations to Singapore, as part of its continued commitment to provide premium content protection and anti-piracy to its customers around the world.
Since it was founded in 2000, Friend MTS has established itself at the forefront of the industry, and the new office continues the company’s strong global growth in 2023. The move was also aimed at enhancing further the firm’s content and revenue security operations in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
Friend MTS’ Singapore office will provide sales and support services for its clients throughout the territory. The team will help rights holders, broadcasters, and OTT (over-the-top) operators to enhance their content security and revenue protection strategies by deploying advanced and end-to-end content security solutions such as dynamic server blocking, large-scale monitoring, subscription and distribution-level watermarking and effective enforcement.
In an interview during the recently concluded International Broadcasting Convention or IBC 2023 in Amsterdam, Friend MTS shared how it continues to thrive in safeguarding premium content and providing anti-piracy services globally.
Improving solutions in constant evolution
Friend MTS’ competitive edge in the industry was due to its commitment of continuous improvement of its solutions while closely collaborating with its clients. With this move, the company was able to roll out updates to its solutions in the past year.
“With over 230 updates to our solutions within the last year alone, we have been able to disrupt millions of instances of ever-evolving piracy and enable our customers to generate extra revenues,” Friend MTS said.
The content protection services provider also boasted its “large and ever-increasing volume of unique evidence and intelligence” gathered from its automated content monitoring of piracy sources worldwide after over 20 years of experience.
“[With this], we are rolling out our Delivery Server Blocking solution in the APAC region on the heels of the successes we have had in other territories with similar legislative systems,” it said, talking about the solution’s deployment in Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Proven services and solutions
During the IBC 2023, Friend MTS showcased its services and solutions that have been proven by its customers such as forensic watermarking, fingerprint-augmented content monitoring and legal enforcement methods including Dynamic Delivery Server (DS) Blocking.
“The DS Blocking solution that we pioneered in 2017 is regarded by our customers as one of the most effective anti-piracy measures, particularly successful for live sports. Utilising our 24/7 piracy monitoring and detection, DS Blocking provides real-time blocking of access to illicit content during sports matches and other competitions,” it said.
Friend MTS said this serves as a full toolset of security solutions that “effectively disrupt content and revenue theft” for its customers.
Meanwhile, Friend MTS’ video fingerprint technology is among the most widely used video recognition technologies worldwide. This technology was donated by Friend MTS to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) in 2014 to assist in their work of aiding the rescue of victims of child abuse and combating the trade-in and dissemination of child abuse material globally.
Protecting contents
Over the years in the industry, Friend MTS assured that their solutions remain “unrivalled” due to the scale of their operation, automation, accuracy, and their impact on both the piracy landscape and our customers’ bottom lines.
“With some of our customers achieving as much as a 90% reduction in illegal redistribution of their high-value content and using the new opportunities to engage with the diverted audiences, Friend MTS’s content protection enables measurable growth in subscriber numbers and revenue,” it said.
According to them, high-value live, linear, and on-demand content—whether licenced or owned—is a high-ticket investment that requires protection from theft and illegal redistribution to ensure a return of investment (ROI).
“Effective piracy disruption is increasingly top of mind of rights holders and broadcasters that need to show stable and secure ROI. Visibility into the illicit landscape proves crucial for making security decisions including in real-time for live and pay-per-view matches and bouts,” it explained.
For Friend MTS, the reduction of available pirated content, coupled with effective engagement strategies, will help service operators convert and bring subscribers to safe and legitimate offerings.
“Tapping into the sources of revenue undiscovered previously becomes very
important for broadcasters and service operators who want to boost their bottom line
Numbers,” Friend MTS said.
“Only the security services that are able to provide this level of insight into illicit distribution and consumption are able to protect their customers’ investments and enable them to generate new revenue streams,” it added.
Friend MTS has continued to grow since the investment from North Edge in 2022. Additional resources have also been added to the sales function in all territories, and the company has expanded its engineering, and research and development teams by nearly 20%, with a commensurate increase in investment into supporting infrastructure.