Adobe's New Flash Video Player is Cool Advertising...

Adobe's Flash Video has huge penetration. Its brower-based application is nearly everywhere. So, why is Adobe launching a new player this summer? Earlier today, I caught up with Adobe's Craig Barberich at the Streaming Media East conference here in New York. Craig gave us a demo and it's pretty impressive. Unlike the Flash Video that we know, which streams to a browser, the new player is an elegant desktop application. From the player you can watch streaming video or you can download files to be saved. The whole advertising scenario is fascinating. Unlike the current state of Flash, where publishers insert a pre-post or post roll ad into the stream, the new player allows video advertising to be inserted into the downloaded show. I asked Craig about the issue of downloaded ads and do marketers really want old creative on computers. What he told me is that ads can be downloaded and cached, so different ads will play on content even when the computer is disconnected. Wow. I ask Craig about the these large .flv files and bandwidth issues. He said that many of the files will be sent through progressive download. And, he told me that some .flv files will be distributed via P2P. And the the player will likely be implemented in the user generated world pretty soon. Adobe has partners who will support the new media player. They include Blip.TV, Brightcove, Maven, Motionbox and others. I ran into Blip.TV's Mike Hudack who explained the implications of the new Adobe player in the user-generated field. Here is my interview: --- Andy Plesser Adobe Flash Player, Craig Barberich, Mike Hudack, BlipTV