Laurel Reitman Adobe

Hold the Presses: Adobe Enters the Media Business: Advertising Sales as Software Services

As Adobe launches today its much-anticipated desktop application called the Adobe Media Player (AMP) with big content partners, the business model around the new technology is quite novel.

The software giant is providing its platform to producers and is splitting advertising revenue. Adobe isn't selling advertising. The new business is a hybrid of sorts: Software services with revenue based on advertising sold by its content partners. An Adobe spokesperson declined to elaborate on terms.

I'm pleased that Beet.TV has launched an AMP channel as part of the services provided by Blip.tv. (See a screen shot below.) Blip has also launched channels for these shows on its network Alive in Baghdad, Drawn by Pain and Galacticast.

Adobe selects the content partners. Blip.tv is the only video sharing services company which is working with Adobe on this.

Unlike iTunes, which provides little opportunities for video producers to monetize through advertising, the AMP platform is highly customizable. AMP supports banner advertising and all sorts of in-stream media. (Implementation is not that simple and requires some coding skills.)

Ads downloaded into the files can be changed when the computer is online and even when its not connected as ads can stored in the computer and released at determined intervals.

There are some limitations: You can't transfer files to a portable device or a second computer. Also, the AMP files don't travel with much metadata, basically just the video and headline. These limitations will improve, I am told.

It's hard to say how this will play out, but I believe that consumers will want to save media locally. Surely iTunes has proven this. Now, advertisers have a place to play on the desktop.

Above is my interview with Adobe's Laurel Reitman who explains how AMP will provide a rich interactive experience. She also speaks about file formats and the servers involved.

For an informative review of AMP, check out Cliff Edwards in Business Week. Congrats to Steve Donohue at Contentinople who reported much of the news about AMP media partners first on Friday.

-- Andy Plesser

Posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• AMP
• Adobe