I think the sweet spot for digital watermarking may be obvious – those who make their money from the use of images online. Conventional wisdom says this includes stock photo agencies, online retailers, consumer goods manufacturers, and media/entertainment companies.

However, there are a host of other vertical markets currently using digital images; ideal candidates for digital watermarking that you may not have previously thought.

Let’s remember that almost anyone who uses digital images in their business can benefit from what digital watermarking offers – the ability to put an ownership mark into the asset and be able to track where it came from. I talk to all kinds of businesses looking to utilize digital watermarking. Let me tell you about a few of these that I’ve run into in the past week in order to get your juices flowing:

• Video Game Creators and Marketers
  Folks in this space use a ton of creative images, and often these images are highly anticipated, which means they are at a greater risk of being released into the hands of those who would post them online
• Survey Companies
  There’s a lot of surveying going on out there via online resources and email. Large companies have various things surveyed: product designs, new service offerings, colors, etc. Digital images mages go out and the company has no idea what happens to them after that
• Medical Imaging
  I’m sure you're aware that more and more of the medical field is going digital. This includes images taken of you and others for personal medical reasons as well as educational purposes. It is very importan to digitally watermark those pictures for downstream identification

That's just a sampling; there's plenty more where that came from. Look around your business with a different set of eyeglasses, then feel free to contact me if you have ideas to explore. Maybe digital watermarking can play a role in your organization after all?