San Francisco — Adobe Systems Inc., is aggressively widening the use of its Flash to the media world, on Monday announced a strategic and non-exclusive alliance with three companies of Time Warner Inc., to foster collaboration on creating new video experiences for some of the content provider’s online properties.
The partnership includes new initiatives with the three Time Warner Inc. companies — Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., and Home Box Office, Inc., for the creation of next generation video and rich media experiences.
Adobe product manager Jen Taylor said the strategic value of the deal falls into two buckets. First, the partnership is intended to help drive adoption and use of the Flash video platform on Time Warner-owned Web properties.
As part of the alliance, these companies will also collaborate to speed up the development of digital rights management for the Web and desktop, and metadata and audience measurement solutions to improve the discovery and monetization of content.
Second, Taylor stated that the companies intend to utilize Adobe Flash Platform and video solutions in some key areas, including driving innovations for rights management, driving analytics, and to provide differentiated experiences for consumers of HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros. Entertainment content across multiple distribution platforms.
“At Turner we work to ensure that our audience, our advertisers and our creative partners are well served by our brands across all the platforms we use for distribution,” said Scott Teissler, chief technology officer at Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. “This multifaceted developmental alliance with Adobe is intended to promote and exemplify the kind of ubiquitous media delivery functions — measurement, context, identification, reach — we need to please the consumer and support a content-sustaining business model.”
Of the three properties, the initial one to witness a real benefit will be Home Box Office. As part of the announcement, Time Warner said that HBO.com would soon be relaunched “making extensive use of the Adobe Flash Platform.” In theory this would replace the content provider’s “HBO on Broadband” application which is currently limited to subscribers of Wisconsin’s Time Warner service and requires a PC, leaving Mac users out in the cold.
The alliance is worth noticing in part because the three Time Warner divisions in question pose three very different technology use cases and possible revenue models.
“This partnership gives us a chance to work with Time Warner across these three very different properties. It will be interesting to see how each of them embrace the web,” Taylor says.
“The Time Warner entertainment companies have the same goals and technology vision,” said Bob Zitter, chief technology officer and executive vice president, Technology, HBO. “This will be an incredibly productive alliance with Adobe for all involved.”
“Warner Bros. Entertainment plans to implement Adobe’s full range of technologies into a diverse set of new media initiatives,” said Darcy Antonellis, president, Warner Bros. Technical Operations. “We are pleased about the benefits such an alliance will bring to enhance the consumer experience.”
Time Warner already employs Flash to power streaming shows on The WB, movie trailers and TV shows at Warnerbrothers.com, and live and archived streaming news on CNN.com.