Adobe has announced the beta release of its full Project Primetime publishing, monetization and analytics platform for video delivered to connected devices. Adobe is also introducing two new Primetime components, MediaWeaver, a dynamic ad insertion service and Primetime Media Player, a cross-platform player tightly integrated with analytics components of Primetime.

Adobe is positioning Primetime as a comprehensive solution for professional content providers eager to move past cobbling together multiple products that often result in sub-optimal user experiences with online and mobile video. Primetime was originally unveiled in February, with the Highlights component that allowed quick clip and metadata creation from live programming.

Primetime knits together Adobe's acquisitions of Auditude, Omniture and Demdex with its Media Server, Flash, Pass and Access products. Primetime's over-arching goal is to more closely link content and its monetization, allowing the full value of any individual piece of content to be extracted based on its audience composition. As Jeremy Helfand, Adobe's VP, Monetization reminded me, traditionally video publishing and video monetization have been separate activities, served by separate technology providers and with separate analytics.

For instance, the ability to test the best type of ads and ad loads per program and per device hasn't been possible. Primetime's vision is that by integrating content and audience analytics into ad decisioning, dynamically serving the optimal ad at the optimal time becomes possible. With MediaWeaver, users get relevant ads so engagement increases with advertisers more satisfied and content providers generating higher revenue per piece of content. As Jeremy pointed out, this is especially valuable for live content, where monetization is essentially a one-time opportunity and must be done right.

With Media Player, Adobe is also taking a more aggressive step into video publishing and user experience. The Media Player is meant to simplify publishing to multiple devices and provide a buffering-free experience. It also has analytics hooks to deliver audience measurement and ensure ad optimization. The Media Player is available in beta via an SDK for Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS with future releases for game consoles, OTT devices and connected TVs.

In sum, Primetime marks the continued evolution and maturation of the online and mobile video industries. Not long ago, content providers simply wanted to be able to publish their video online. Then they wanted simple monetization tools. But now, with consumers enthralled by anytime/anywhere content access and online/mobile distribution becoming a strategic imperative, the tools to optimize and integrate publishing, monetization and analytics are becoming critical. Primetime is the first full platform to deliver on this, but no question others will be forthcoming.

To learn more about Primetime, come to VideoSchmooze on Wed. morning, Dec. 5th in NYC where Adobe's Noah Levine will do a short presentation. Early bird, discounted registration is open until tomorrow.

Below is a video from Adobe explaining more about Primetime.