Up until… this week, a large disconnect has existed between web-based content creation and content measurement. That chasm may have narrowed significantly since Adobe announced its purchase of Omniture – the online marketing, web analytics (and data collection) company.
Adobe has taken a significant step in moving beyond it’s digital content creation roots into what may turn out to be a much, much larger business. Network and cable television are closed systems. The Internet is an open system. The first company to establish smart, economical and trusted methods of tracking and monetizing any and all types of content on the Internet could become the new platform for web content delivery - that’s a very big deal.
Flash comes as close to ubiquity as it gets on the web (however, Google and Apple continue to shut Adobe out on their own respective ’mobile web’ platforms). Imagine if every flash player also tracked and reported usage, supported trusted digital watermarking processes, facilitated micro payments and helped to connect the social media and viral distribution dots. Adobe is trusted – especially by the creative and development community so it would be comparatively easier for them to set the standards and to ultimately evolve into becoming ’the platform.’
This acquisition could also be seen as a defensive move as Adobe will be under some pressure to add more value to flash because the implementation of the new HTML5 standard (whenever that happens) will include video tags which don’t require a video player plug-in.
The holy grail of marketing has been to find a way to track the results of your marketing program. Adobe has made a very strategic move in purchasing Omniture. Content developers and their customers should look forward to implementing new ‘commerce modules’ with future Adobe product releases.
Nielsen has released a new report that looks at online engagement by Internet users. John Burbank (above), CEO of Nielsen, provides highlights of the study. Online video and social media lead the way while the rate of growth for ’traditional’ online activities such as e-mail and search has continued to decrease.
According to the report online video and social media have now surpassed e-mail in terms of online activity. Why is this happening? Johan Jervoe, CMO for Marketing at Macdonald’s summarized this new behaviour well: ” It’s not about technology and wanting to be online constantly. It’s about wanting to belong and be connected constantly.”
The term ‘Online Video’ encompasses a broad range of business activities.This has lead to confusion in the media and in the marketplace. For businesses looking to use online video as a means of communicating with their key audiences, the future of online video is indeed bright. For portals and services looking to commercialize the distribution of the millions of videos available online (entertainment, corporate, user-generated… whatever) through advertising or service fees, the future is at best, uncertain.
Déjà vu? We’ve already seen how things will shake out for online video distributors. Remember Napster, Yahoo Music or Viacom’s Urge? The music industry struggled though the same painful consolidation that the online video consolidation and distribution industry is experiencing today. (The Ad Networks are next… the Content Delivery Networks are still in their growth phase.)
The VC’s that invested millions in too many similar ventures have turned off taps. Consolidation in the industry has started and will pick up steam in 2009. That will leave a number of dominant players like iTunes and Amazon on the fee side of things, companies like Hulu and YouTube as portal players and a few other heavy weights like Microsoft and Facebook (and perhaps a couple of the major TV networks) to round out major services.
While the portals and distributors of online video sort themselves out, the use of the online video as a communications medium continues to flourish.
