Adobe ‘Project Primetime’ Integrates Video With Advertising, Analytics

At both the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Annual Leadership Summit and Mobile World Congress, Adobe Systems announced a new fully integrated video technology platform, code named Project Primetime, to enable smooth, TV-like experiences for ad-supported videos across web-connected devices.

This new platform delivers premium video and advertising content consistently across all major platforms, including Apple iOS, Google Android, desktop operating systems and connected TVs, said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of Interactive Development at Adobe, in a call with reporters.

Shown for the first time at these two major industry events, elements of Primetime will be available throughout 2012.

End-to-end workflow

Primetime creates a single, end-to-end workflow that interconnects Adobe streaming technologies, content protection, analytics and optimisation with the recently acquired Auditude video advertising platform. This integration enables premium video providers to give customers a superior viewing experience through seamless dynamic ad insertion into any content type, whether linear, live or on-demand across web-connected devices.

Adobe Digital Marketing Suite is integral to Primetime, ensuring that media companies are able to combine consumption and revenue data to personalise their content and ads.

“Adobe’s new video technology platform is transforming the way video content and ads are being served and consumed,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president of Digital Media Business at Adobe, in a statement. “Project Primetime gives media companies one solution to deliver and monetise their content seamlessly across tablets, mobile phones, TVs and PCs while delivering better consumer experiences over IP.”

As part of the first phase of bringing the platform to market, Adobe is making “Primetime Highlights” available today. The new video publishing offering integrates a web-based video clip editor with the Adobe Auditude ad platform enabling the industry’s first single workflow for creating and monetising live video clips in real time.

Video publishers are able to deliver ad supported clips that are instantly available – even while an event is still ongoing – making content more timely and less expensive to produce. Clips can be delivered via an Adobe-provided video player within an existing mobile application or embedded in a website.

Primetime Highlights enables a viewing experience that is smooth and comparable to traditional TV broadcasts with seamless content and ad transitions. Video publishers can start publishing and monetising video clips to the iPad today. Other platforms are expected to be supported in 2012.

Major components

Major components of Primetime include:

Adobe Auditude provides an ad management and monetisation platform for high-quality advertising experiences, allowing publishers and media companies to increase the value of their content across connected devices, while also lowering operational costs.

The Adobe Digital Marketing Suite is an integrated portfolio of analytics and optimisation products that provide insight into the performance of digital marketing initiatives and allow marketers to personalise those initiatives for greater relevance and engagement.

Adobe Access helps content owners, distributors and advertisers content protect premium videos and more securely deliver them to connected devices.

Adobe streaming technologies serve rich media content across platforms including Apple iOS with a choice of powerful protocols that help save significant bandwidth costs and lighten network load.

Adobe Pass verifies a user’s entitlement to content in a manner that is both simple and secure.

Primetime Highlights, Adobe’s new video publishing offering, integrates a web-based video clip editor with Adobe Auditude, enabling a single workflow for creating and monetising live video clips on the fly.

Adobe Auditude has received the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) accreditation of the Digital Video Ad Impression Statistics for ads delivered by its ad management and monetisation platform. With this accreditation, customers can be assured that Adobe’s methods for generating ad impression statistics are in accordance with industry-established guidelines published by the MRC.

iOS, Android support

Adobe Access 4 software will support native iOS apps, extending its existing support for desktop operating systems, Android apps and connected TVs. With added support for content using the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) protocol for iOS devices, Adobe Access now enables premium video publishers to reach the broadest possible audience across devices with a single content protection workflow and infrastructure. Adobe Access, formerly known as Adobe Flash Access, already protects videos delivered across browsers and applications using RTMP and HDS (HTTP Dynamic Streaming) protocols.

Adobe streaming technologies will support MPEG-DASH, a set of emerging standards for streaming multimedia content over the web that will help reduce technology fragmentation. Support for MPEG-DASH, which is expected to become a profile of HDS, comes as Adobe continues to collaborate in this area with a large number of industry partners. At the same time, Adobe will continue to innovate and develop its HTTP streaming protocol, HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS), which is used by major broadcasters worldwide.

Primetime is being showcased to broadcasters and media companies starting on 27 February and is expected to be available in 2012 with support for Windows, Mac OS, Apple iOS, Google Android, Samsung Smart TVs and other platforms, Winokur said. The individual products and technologies of the platform continue to be available as separate offerings. Adobe Access support for iOS is expected to ship in spring 2012.

How much do you know about smartphones? Take our quiz.