Turner Broadcasting System became the latest Adobe Primetime customer Tuesday, furthering its adoption of video technology to power new TNT and TBS apps and Web sites. The deal gives television viewers more content from AdultSwim, Cartoon Network, truTV, and NBA League Pass in the near future.
As part of the package, Turner taps Adobe's Primetime Player and its ad insertion technology to deliver
live and streaming content across iOS and Android devices. The service supports premium pay-TV content across devices by using PayTV Pass -- TV Everywhere authentication technology that TBS helped to
develop.
A single sign-on enables viewers to access Turner content across apps and devices without having to log in and authenticate repeatedly. TBS also has begun to use Adobe Primetime
DRM digital rights management to protect premium video content online.
Adobe, which saw customers deliver more than 29 billion video streams in 2013 -- up about 125% compared with the year-ago quarter -- also added to the platform analytics, cloud-based DRM and quality of service. "Unique visitors to sites supporting everywhere content grew sevenfold," said Jeremy Helfand, vice president of Adobe Video Solutions. "We've seen a 150% increase in video consumption on tablets, and 113% on smartphones."
Helfand said Adobe wants to make the technology working behind the scenes invisible to consumers who are consuming content. That means automating authentication -- making it easier to watch streaming content on mobile devices with a click to open the app and stream the content.
Using Adobe Analytics, content owners can gain a better understanding through second-by-second insights, such as time spent viewing content along with start, completion and abandonment rates. Standardized metrics for video content and ads allow users to compare detailed viewer engagement across platforms and devices to enable accurate benchmarks.
Adobe Digital Index saw the number of authenticated streams increase by 400% in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2012. Primetime's authentication technology is used by more than 50 TV channels powering more than 100 apps and Web sites across iOS, Android, Windows 8, Xbox, Roku, Apple TV and SmartTVs. Customers of Adobe Primetime authentication technology include Disney, TBS, Inc., Viacom, Fox, NBCU, Scripps, A&E and others.
This is exciting news for both content publishers and consumers. Next on the horizon: a way to merge all of the data (Adobe, Nielsen) into one dashboard for big data analysis.