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2012

Adobe Looks To Improve Video Ads, Unveils TV-Like Content To Online Publishers

November 19, 2012 0

San Francisco — In an attempt to improve its online video monetization goal, Adobe is boosting its portfolio for online advertising solutions with the integration of video ad server Auditude with analytics platform SiteCatalyst and data management platform AudienceManager as part of Project Primetime, the company’s consolidated video technology platform, touted to enable TV content owners and distributors to maximize audience reach while seamlessly integrating and monetizing online video ads.

Adobe unveiled Project Primetime–following the acquisition of its last year’s Auditude–back in February but has staggered its rollout throughout the year. Now, the latest move aims to help video publishers optimize professional content across devices as well as audience segment, giving consumers a TV-like content experience, buffer-free, across Web-connected devices.

Essentially, that should make things more streamlined for advertisers and media companies. But the major potential may lie in Adobe’s ability to bundle together Project Primetime with its SiteCatalyst and AudienceManager products–enabling brands to see how consumers are responding to videos and video ads.

According to Ashley Still, director of product management at media and Advertisers solutions at Adobe, explained in a blog post last week that the consolidation with SiteCatalyst should supply publishers with a common view of engagement and ad data, such as revenue generated and to make online video viewing feel just like TV:

“With seamless ad insertion and native support for protected playback built into the Player, consumers will enjoy faster video load times, fewer playback errors, and a less obtrusive advertising experience.”

While it taps a number of existing Adobe solutions, the Primetime Media Player for desktop browsers especially leverages Flash Player, and it includes both analytics technology and broadcast-specific capabilities such as closed captioning and ad insertion. Users do not have to download a separate player for non-desktop devices.

In fact, Adobe is formulating the Primetime Media Player as ideal for broadcast networks and other TV content distributors because the service is designed to offer a “single workflow for content preparation, rights management and streaming” without any platform fragmentation challenges.

Eventually, the company can now provide marketers with a chart displaying the engagement rates with a video, along with ad breaks to determine revenue and where viewers might have closed the browser.

This latest solution is supposed to distribute, monetize and then analyze user data based on the visitors’ behavior. Marketers can now do A/B testing, for example, between shorter pre-rolls or fewer mid-rolls to determine whether that increases or reduces the audience.

Hence, that statistics represents that ads can be better targeted and optimized within the player based on the individual user in order to provide a better experience for the consumer while maximizing the value of the content and advertisements at the same time.

However, the seamless integration between Auditude and AudienceManager empowers publishers with the ability to bring in CRM and other first-party data and combine it with third- or second-party data to create audience segments, such as gender, age, purchase intent or other data the company does not have. For instance, a company with a segment aimed at techies can bring the data into Auditude and traffic all the ad campaigns based on the segments, Still said.

A beta version of the Primetime Media Player is available now as an SDK for Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS. Besides, Adobe also will launch the PrimeTime tool MediaWeaver that allows publishers, media companies and app developers flow ads into live, linear and on-demand videos, and the new Primetime Media Player ties together everything together into a single content distribution mechanism.

For a closer look at Adobe’s Project Primetime, check out the promo video below:

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