Zuora, Adobe and Deloitte have come together to offer MarketMix for Media, a new end to end OTT video solution that brings together their combined power to help companies launch, monetize, and manage OTT video offerings. We spoke with Blake Elmquist, Business Development Manager at Adobe Primetime on the partnership:

Congratulations on Adobe Primetime winning the “Most Significant Impact Award” at TVOT this year! Can you tell us a little about your service and your customers?
Adobe Primetime is a multiscreen over-the-top (OTT) platform for live, linear and video-on-demand (VOD) programming. Its modular distribution, personalization and monetization capabilities include TVSDK for multiscreen playback, DRM, authentication, dynamic ad insertion (DAI), and a sell-side platform (SSP). Major media companies like Comcast, Turner and NBC Sports Group leverage Adobe Primetime to deliver the highest quality viewing experiences, resulting in loyal, engaged audiences, and ultimately, greater revenue from ad sales and subscriptions.
Adobe Primetime also has extensive integrations with the Adobe Marketing Cloud. In March, we announced Adobe Primetime OTT, enabled by Adobe Marketing Cloud — a bundle of existing Adobe Marketing Cloud and third-party technologies that form an end-to-end solution. The offering helps TV networks and pay-TV providers launch OTT services and drive audience acquisition, engagement, and monetization. Media companies can now deliver more personalized TV and ad experiences directly to consumers via mobile, laptops and connected devices such as Apple TV, Sony PlayStation, Roku and Microsoft Xbox.

Adobe Primetime is a part of Deloitte’s ‘Marketmix for Media’ along with Zuora – why did you feel the need for such a unique partnership?
It’s no secret that the pay-TV industry is experiencing an accelerated pace of innovation. Viewer behavior has evolved, and broadcasters, cable networks and MVPDs are investing in OTT services to capture (ie monetize) audiences in search of alternatives to the traditional Pay-TV bundle.
When evaluating which partners would be critical to the success of Primetime OTT, we were immediately drawn to Deloitte Digital. Our companies share a history of collaborating on dynamic digital marketing solutions, and Adobe values Deloitte Digital’s industry insights and experience in design, technology implementation and operations.
MarketMix for Media harnesses Deloitte Digital’s expertise to accelerate deployment and reduce costs with pre-integrations to Adobe Primetime’s OTT offering and third-party solutions, while enabling companies to manage the business operations required to run a direct-to-consumer service.

Identifying the right go-to-market and revenue acceleration tools and strategies seems to be key to success in the OTT video industry. Is it fair to say Adobe and Zuora provide a comprehensive solution for OTT video monetization?
Absolutely. We believe that success in the OTT world is dependent on four factors:
1. Deliver the highest quality video experience, across any device
2. Engage audiences through data-driven personalization and recommendations
3. Build audiences through data-driven marketing that lowers acquisition costs
4. Monetize audiences through subscription, advertising or transactional models
Adobe Primetime OTT was built to enable media companies to successfully tackle each of these challenges. When it comes to monetization, Adobe has deep roots in advertising technology, although it’s critical to have a solution in place that supports the ongoing innovation around pricing and packaging that we’re seeing in the market.
This is why we believe that Zuora is a terrific complement to our solution. With Zuora and Adobe Primetime OTT, any video company or broadcaster worldwide will be able to offer direct-to-consumer content with flexible packaging and bundling options, including subscription and transaction-based pricing, to optimize the viewer experience and reduce churn.

There’s so much going on in the OTT video market – new, niche services as well as traditional networks entering the fray – that it’s difficult to assess who’s getting it right. In your view, which companies have the right approach and why?
Despite the recent slew of new OTT launches, I believe that this market remains nascent. Initial entrants into the OTT/Direct-to-Consumer video market have focused their investment on tackling the complexity of delivering video in a reliable, scalable fashion. As a result, there has been less of a focus, thus far, on personalization and subscriber acquisition.
Netflix remains the most visible example of a company that has successfully progressed along the OTT maturity curve. Netflix’s investment in R&D ($600M+ in 2015) has enabled a deep understanding of its viewers, allowing the service to recommend relevant content across tens of thousands of sub-genres. While this is just one example, it’s indicative of how Netflix leverages user data to power personalization and maintain a level of subscriber churn that’s 3-4X lower than competitive offerings.
Another company that is delivering great consumer viewing experiences is MLB. Their OTT offering is hugely entertaining, informative, easy-to-use, and just plain awesome for baseball fans.

What’s coming next at Adobe Primetime?
For us, it’s all about extending the core value proposition of Adobe Primetime — quality, reliability and performance at scale — into other areas of the multiscreen TV distribution and monetization workflow. A few key areas of investment and innovation that accelerate our broader integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud right now include:
• Personalization. We’re leverage technology from Adobe Target to enable real-time recommendations based on viewer behavioral insights gleaned from across the Marketing Cloud.
• Virtual Reality. It’s still early days for VR, but we think there are specific use cases — like live sports broadcasts — that will harness the full potential of this new technology.
• Universal notifications. We’re tapping Adobe Campaign and Adobe Social to enable better, more-targeted, more-accurate notifications for individual viewers based on their preferences beyond specific apps. We believe consumers want to be able to learn about whatever interests them without having to set preferences in 15 different apps.
It’s an exciting time for Adobe Primetime — and for TV viewers — and we’re excited and humbled to be able to create value for so many large global broadcasters, TV networks, and MVPDs.

For more, check out Marketmix for Media: The Comprehensive M&E Solution for OTT Video