• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 22, 2012

Adobe today will release a series of advancements for Project Primetime that supports TV ad content across connected devices. The new offering, Primetime Simulcast, allows media companies to simultaneously broadcast traditional channels online with dynamically inserted ads across devices.

Primetime Simulcast supports apps for iOS and Android devices. Jeremy Helfand, vice president of monetization at Adobe, said it should reduce costs by providing a unified workflow integrating player and streaming ad server analytics. It cuts down the need for media companies to piece together solutions living in silos.

Some 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 37 billion online content videos in April, and video ads represented nearly 9.5 billion, about 1 in 5 videos viewed online for the month, according to comScore Video Metrix.

Google Sites generating the highest number of views at 17 billion, followed by Hulu with 901 million and Yahoo Sites with 742 million. The average viewer watched 21.8 hours of online video content, with Google Sites at 7.2 hours and Hulu at 3.8 hours, earning the highest average engagement among the top ten properties, according to comScore.

Eliminating buffering would improve user experience and increase engagement rates making advertising more valuable for site visitor, publishers, media companies and clients.

Media companies forced to become technology providers attempted to build bridges to close the gap between siloed platforms, which created challenges with the organization. Adobe wants to help marketers think about what workflows will look like in the future as the two platforms -- linear and digital – combine.

The Primetime Simulcast tool also complements Primetime Highlights, which allows broadcasters to convert live streaming to short ad-supported video clips of news, entertainment and sports highlights.

Adobe released the next version of Auditude, a video ad managed and monetization platform, to insert and measure online video ads. The integration of AudienceManager and third-party site data enables publishers to understand who views the ad and target their content accordingly. A feature in the platform, Partner Management, will now allow media company partners to share revenue and allocation of sales rights with syndication partners.