'Net Features : adobe

Predicting Facebook Post Popularity

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:05:00 GMT

The role that social citations play in the search marketing landscape is increasing dramatically. And don't think for a moment that smart software solution developers are not fully aware of that fact.

Adobe, for example, recently announced new predictive capabilities for its social media optimization platform Adobe Social (part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite).

What makes the development so interesting is that Adobe uses historical data — in aggregate and at the customer-specific level — to predict engagement levels (as well as sentiment) around a specific type of Facebook post. The platform can recommend keywords, content types and even timing that could lead to a better response (deeper engagement et al).

Adobe Social users can see the estimated range for the amount of Likes, comments, and shares a post will receive, as well as identify other metrics that matter to them (which Adobe will then track and predict in the future). Before posts are published, the service will notify users if post elements exist that could be improved — for example, perhaps there is a better time to schedule a post.

Rumor has it that Adobe will quickly expand beyond Facebook (and that's good news as, apparently, Google+ is gaining ground on Facebook which is (also apparently) losing millions of users.

DevCon5 Offers Interactivity, Website Magazine Discount

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:10:00 GMT

Executives and developers from Adobe, appMobile, Mozilla and Nickelodeon are just some of the speakers at DevCON5, which runs from July 24-25 at The Kimmel Center on New York University’s campus in New York City.

The conference provides attendees with ideas, best practices and information to enhance their skills and develop tactics to build HTML5 pages and apps. The event also offers opportunities to network with colleagues and the HMTL community. Additionally, hands-on demonstrations are among the event highlights, which has not always been the case.

“This is our third year, and from the first year to the third year, the thing that is very visible is how much code is out there now that wasn’t there before,” said Carl Ford, Crossfire CEO and DevCon5 Content and Community Executive Director. “When we did this show, most people were talking theoretically, and there were a few people with experience, but the browsers weren’t ready. Now, we are at a point, when people are showing stuff, they’ve already deployed it.”

Ford also says that most presenters provide actual code, GitHub references and meet-ups for where people can gather to continue to develop projects.

“Overall, it’s an interactive group that believes code sharing is a good idea,” said Ford.

Attendees can expect to learn about:

• HTML5’s capabilities, limitations and future potential

• How HTML5 can improve user experiences without Flash

• The impact of HTML5 beyond just video

• How to balance user demands with simplicity and power

• How to create “delightful” and sustainable user experiences with HTML5

• The impact of HTML’s universal experience on unique devices

• Gaming’s impact on HTML5

• How to develop a mobile Web strategy based on HTML5

• HTML5’s impact on acquisition strategies

• How to enable browser security

• Who will win the browser wars

Early bird registration for DevCon5 runs now through April 1. Website Magazine readers can receive a 20 percent discount when registering for the event by using WM as the discount code.

Responsive Design Gets Simplified

Michael Garrity — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:45:00 GMT

As a Valentine’s Day present of sorts, Adobe announced the release of a handful of new Web design and development tools for its Creative Cloud suite earlier today. This includes updates to the Adobe Edge Animate and Dreamweaver programs, but the real star of the show is the Adobe Edge Reflow responsive design tool.

Edge Reflow will allow users to create “high fidelity” CSS3 website designs that can realize and resize for the design surface that the user is visiting the site from, while allowing creators to select from a desktop or mobile-first design approach and to preview their work (in its various sizes) from within a browser.

Needless to say, this is going to be a handy tool for many Web designers and developers out there, as it makes it significantly easier to create a robust, feature-rich mobile-responsive website; and really, isn’t that the ultimate goal of most Web professionals these days? Of course it is, and that is why solutions like Adobe Edge Reflow are not only going to become more commonplace, but they’ll likely become something of a necessity for the designers and developers of the future.

Responsive Design: Then & Now

Traditionally, the bulk of the work of responsive design has been laid at the desk of a content management system (CMS), which most websites utilize in one form or another through a platform like WordPress or Drupal, or by using an internally developed system. Either way, the responsive design challenge has long been based upon the capabilities of a company’s CMS.

Building a responsive website starts by designing a liquid layout or set of fluid grids that expands with a page to fit the browser/screen from which the site is being accessed. But that isn’t the most important part, because next the developer has to include the CSS3 media queries that help websites to gather data about a sits visitor and use that info to conditionally apply CSS styles. These queries effectively control the site’s behavior and allow it to respond to the end user’s needs.

Until now, the challenge for responsive design has largely been trying to find a theme for a designer’s content management system that would be able to respond to a wide array of different screen sizes and device types, but thanks to new platforms, solutions and services (like Adobe Edge Reflow) that take automatically take care of the “responsive” aspect of website design, that is quickly changing.

No Longer Just a Special Consideration

If the release of Edge Reflow signifies anything, it’s that responsive design isn’t just a cool added bonus that only a select few websites have or need to worry about anymore. From now through the foreseeable future, mobile is going to be a major factor in company’s Web success, and responsive design is the simplest and most effective way to meet that problem head-on.

As a result, solutions that make it easy to not only create a website that is able to automatically respond to a user’s screen size or device, but also allows designers and developers to preview what their site will look like in a variety of different shapes and sizes as they’re designing it, will become some of the most useful tools available to them; so much so that we will likely begin to see a proliferation of similar services sooner, rather than later. We already are, to some extent.

Just yesterday, a new all-in-one CMS and marketing platform called Bislr was launched, born initially out of the desire to combine all of the different touch points for business owners, designers and marketers into a single, unified platform. With Bislr, companies can build their own “intelligent” websites from the ground up, using a simple drag-and-drop interface, that come equipped with built-in social media and marketing capabilities, including integration with CRM and marketing automation software. And on top of all that, the service creates sites that are immediately responsive “with no extra work.” Users can even adjust their interface’s size to see how the site will look when rendered on different devices, allowing them to make changes as necessary during the initial build.

Responding to Needs

As the need for responsive design increases exponentially, so will the need to simplify the process for designers and developers, as virtually every site they create will have to be able to operate across devices. Adobe Edge Reflow may be the first big-name solution to provide this kind of quick-and-easy functionality, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Q&A With Adobe CQ Client TV One

Administrator — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:50:00 GMT

What company wouldn’t love seeing year-over-year page views increase by 53 percent, unique page views increase by 45 percent and average time-on-site increase by 6 percent?

Those are the metrics that fuel one Adobe success story. TV One, an entertainment network owned primarily by Radio One and NBC Universal, turned to Adobe Marketing Cloud, including Adobe CQ, to help distinguish its brand presence in an increasingly competitive media landscape. Both parties are happy with the results. TV One Vice President of Digital Media Allison Rand answered several questions about the experience:

WM: How does Adobe CQ empower content contributors to publish content; and how does this ability impact the TV One user experience?

AR: 1. We use the DAM along with the CMS to drag photos into multiple pages in different shapes and sizes without tedious re-sizing efforts.

2. The tagging and site taxonomy allow us to publish one article in many places without the manual labor of adding it by hand. This also helps keep the site looking fresh and updated.

3. The drop-and-drag functionality is easy to learn and use - allowing us to publish more content without the effort of remembering tricky systems and codes. The user experience has improved since launching -- we have seen an increase in pages visits per unique and and increase in time spent on the site. We attribute this success to the launch of new, successful programming with strong digital content and the fact that we can easily create more content in a cleaner, more engaging way.

WM: How has leveraging the Adobe Marketing Cloud helped to provide a seamless cross-channel experience?

AR: Through the simplicity of CQ5 we are able to promote on-air tune in more effectively on each page as well as cross promote viewers to new shows.

WM: What feedback have you received after adopting this enterprise-level solution from Adobe (either from TV One executives, viewers and/or employees)?

AR: The stronger analytics -- increased page views, uniques, time spent and pages per visit, decreased bounce rates - suggest that our audience has adopted well to using the new site. Our staff can create more content flexibly, so they have adopted well.

Here are screenshots from TV One's redesign:

Facebook Engagement Grows by… 896%?

Allison Howen — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:04:00 GMT

Regardless of claims that Facebook is now forcing Brand Page owners to pay for exposure, engagement rates on the world's most popular social network seem to be soaring.

In fact, Adobe’s Q3 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update reveals that fans’ engagement with brands on Facebook, which includes likes, comments and shares, grew by 896 percent year over year. Adobe concludes that this growth is the result of Facebook’s Timeline redesign as well as new acquisition and engagement metrics and more effective social marketing by brands.

An additional factor that is undoubtedly influencing fan engagement rates on Facebook is mobile. According to the study, mobile users now account for nearly a quarter of all Facebook engagement, which is a four-fold increase from the period prior to the Timeline change.

However, despite this study, Facebook’s Timeline feature has been controversial, to say the least. Aside from the general public’s typical moans and groans about getting accustomed to the new design, many Page owners have complained that their content doesn’t reach as much of their fan base as it previously did – unless, of course, they promote their posts. This means that brands actually need to pay to have more of their existing fans see their content, unlike the pre-Timeline era when brand content was sent to every fan’s newsfeed – for free.

Has Timeline affected your brand’s engagement rates on Facebook? Has promoting your posts led to a positive ROI for your brand? Let us know in the comments section below.

Low Latency Analytics Arrive in SiteCatalyst

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:53:00 GMT

Today’s Web is fast and vendors of analytics products are increasingly ready to serve. Adobe, for example, is now providing its users access to real-time data in its SiteCatalyst product.

Adobe's new “Current Data” reports show the latest collected data from the current day - for Page Views and Instances on props within one minute, and conversion metrics and instances on eVars within just 20 minutes.

Currently, the latency on standard SiteCatalyst 15 reports can be up to 90 minutes, so the improvement will likely be well received by users, particularly as the holiday shopping season is now less than 65 days away.

As it stands, several reports are unavailable as Current Data reports including mobile and video reports, but expect further improvements soon as Adobe indicated this release was just the first in a multi-phase approach to providing access to recent and real-time analytics for SiteCatalyst customers.

Inside the Mind of Adobe Muse

Michael Garrity — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:21:00 GMT

Two days ago, Adobe released a new version of its Muse software, part of the Creative Cloud suite that allows designers to create entire websites without having to write any code. This update adds a slew of features to the Muse platform, most notably support for contact forms, Japanese availability and Edge integration, among many others.

Muse is now better equipped to help users plan, design and publish HTML pages without use or extensive knowledge of code. For those with the foresight to have become Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers, they will receive this new update automatically and for free. This is one of the (and probably the biggest) perks of becoming a Creative Cloud subscriber, which gives customers access to new software features and upgrades as soon as they’re available. It also provides them with access to other special exclusive Web-based services, such as hosting, Web fonts and file synchronization.

Subscribers who have already installed muse can simply open up the application and click the “Install Now” button on the updater screen to access all of these new features.

Probably the biggest addition to Muse is its built-in support for contact forms, which makes it super easy for customers to add, configure and style contact forms in their site design, ultimately eliminating the need to embed HTML code from third-party online form services. Adobe says that this new feature is “just the beginning” of Muse adding “more extensive content management capabilities” by way of tighter integration with the company’s site hosting platform, Adobe Business Catalyst.

Plus, Muse now supports HTML5 animations created with version 7 of Adobe Edge Animate (formerly just Adobe Edge), which can add a deeper level of interactivity and more dynamic elements to Web pages. The upgrade even gives website designers the ability to add and link to downloadable files of virtually any type; this includes .pdf, .zip, .dmg, .exe and more. Oh, and the software now supports cascading style sheets (CSS), meaning customers no longer have to rely on images when adding effects to a website, such as glows or drop shadows.

Many of the widgets available for Muse are getting a facelift as part of this new upgrade, as well. This includes slideshow and composition widget features that offer a numeric stepper for controlling auto play speeds in seconds and a shuffle option. Also, changing a menu widget from horizontal to vertical (or vice versa) will now do a better job of preserving size and spacing. Finally, when customers change the state of one aspect of a widget during the design process, it will change the appropriate sibling parts to the same state to mimic browser behavior more closely.

And for those who use it as their primary language, the newest version of Muse is also available in Japanese.

Other new or updated features include: alignment tools that offer better layout options with panel and ruler guides; a variety of new keyboard shortcuts; drag-and-drop functionality for character, paragraph and graphic styles; FTP upload options for non-Adobe hosting users; user interface tweaks for bug fixes; and better font handling and auto-generated sitemaps for SEO, which result in faster load times and improved visibility on search engines.

For a more in-depth look at each of the features, and to subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud to have access to Muse, as well as a host of other Adobe software and services, click here.

Get Personal with Adobe

Allison Howen — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:50:00 GMT

Personalization is an important aspect of marketing – not only does it attract consumers' attention, but it also leaves a lasting impression.

This is why the new Test and Target Adobe Audience Manager integration is a great tool for marketers who are looking to add some personalization into their campaigns. The integration enables users to leverage data from Adobe’s Audience Manager in order to customize consumer experiences across all digital platforms.

According to Adobe's blog, the best way to explain the power of the integration is to explain the value it brings to clients. For example, if a travel company wants to run a campaign that targets business travelers in Los Angelas and New York, the company could leverage Adobe’s Audience Manager to target traits such as high travel frequency, as well as individual signals like search activity on third-party sites for travel, or even include geo-specific information such as LA or NYC-based users. Then, with that information, the marketer could build a NYC/LA Travel Warrior Persona and customize offers or content on landing pages for this specific customer.

Additionally, marketers can also target consumers as they leave the site by serving relevant banner ads on third-party sites – meaning that the integration can also be used for display ad retargeting.

This personalization enables brands to leave a lasting impression on consumers. According to Adobe's blog, implementation of the integration is pretty straightforward and doesn't impact site load times. It is also important to note that the integration is available in Flash, so that (as previously mentioned) marketers can personalize their ad campaigns.

Source Sans Pro – Adobe Open Source Type

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:25:00 GMT

Adobe has released a new (and free) open source type family by the name of Source Sans Pro.

The Source Sans Pro font, the first ‘open’ font from Adobe, includes six weights (from ExtraLight to Black) in upright and italic styles. The font (seen below) also offers broad language support for Latin script, including Western and Easter European languages, Vietnamese, pinyin Romanization of Chinese and Navajo. The fonts also support both the Indian rupee and the Turkish lira currency symbols.

”The primary need for type in Adobe’s open source applications has thus far been for usage within user interfaces,” said Adobe typeface designer and font developer Paul Hunt. “A second environment of perennial interest to Adobe is the realm of text typography. Thus the immediate constraints on the design were to create a set of fonts that would be both legible in short UI labels, as well as being comfortable to read in longer passages of text on screen and in print.”

The full package of source files are available to download through SourceForge. The Source Sans Pro font is also available for use on the web via font hosting services such as Typekit, WebInk, and Google Web Fonts (as well as for use directly in Google documents and Google presentations shortly).

"I believe that the world of type design and typography has benefited greatly from Adobe’s contributions in the arena of type technology," wrote Hunt, the designer of Source Sans Pro, on the company's Typblography page. "In adding to this legacy, I am proud to announce that today marks another milestone as Adobe makes yet another type resource freely available by releasing the Source Sans Pro family as our first-ever open source type family."

Adobe also released an Adobe Original typeface (not open source) by the name of Leander Script (available on Typekit and WEbINK), along with adding five more fonts to the Adobe Web Fonts collection in Cottonwood Std, Ironwood Std, Juniper Std, Mesqire Std and Ponderosa Std.

SiteCatalyst 15.4 in Focus

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:30:00 GMT

Adobe released a product update last week for SiteCatalyst, introducing a number of new features as well as bringing back some older features based on user request. Let’s take a look at SiteCatalyst v15.4 and see what’s inside.

AppMeasurement Update: Perhaps the most noteworthy update in SiteCatalyst 15.4 is the update of AppMeasurement. Since Webkit-based browsers (e.g. Chrome & Safari) don’t send link click data consistently, this ver¬sion forces WebKit-based browsers to nav¬i¬gate after data is sent to Site¬Cat¬a¬lyst, or after a time¬out is reached (250 ms default). Exit Link track¬ing will auto¬mat¬i¬cally use the new func¬tion¬al¬ity, but cus¬tom link track¬ing requires a change to your onClick code.

Rollups: Adobe brought back the popular Rollup functionality, a report suite that aggregates data from other report suites into one place which is ideal for those with several websites or mobile apps.

Mobile Carriers: Adobe also added a brand-new report on the mobile provider that a visitor or customer used to access a website or application.

Connection Type: This report, which shows SiteCatalyst users how visitors are connecting with their apps and sites which is particularly useful when determining how users of an app connect – via Wifi or 3G/4G - for example.

Segment Visitors to Gain Actionable Insights

Michael Garrity — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 22:30:00 GMT

The ability to incorporate ForeSee surveys into SiteCatalyst isn’t exactly a new feature, but Adobe Genesis just announced an upgrade that expands upon the integration, improving segmentation capabilities and adding some automatic daily data transfers.

These changes will make it easier for users to navigate through their survey data and turn it into more actionable information that can be used to make their websites and marketing campaigns more productive.

Arguably the biggest improvement is the inclusion of automatic daily transfers of (up to 15) ForeSee survey dimensions into SiteCatalyst, which can include latent scores, such as Satisfaction, Navigation or Look and Feel, in addition to custom questions. With these items, users can create new analytics segments in SiteCatalyst.

Below is an example of how users can utilize these segmenting capabilities. It looks at the segment of respondents with “Very Unsatisfied Visits.” As ForeSee’s Satisfaction measures from 0 to 100, this group only represents visits that scored below 50.

This data narrows down those visitors that SiteCatalyst users are most interested in studying, so that they can attempt to find out what may be the cause of the visitors’ dissatisfaction. By studying things like the most common paths taken by these users, which site sections they tended to visit, where they’re giving up and what the effect low satisfaction has on conversion rates, site owners can use this information to optimize their sites (and increase conversions).

Version 2.0 will also include automatic daily transfers to ForeSee of SiteCatalyst behavioral data for survey responders, allowing users to select from over 40 metrics and breakdowns. This can also include custom props and eVars. This will allow for new, more targeted filtering options for ForeSee measurements.

Three New Additions to the Adobe Marketing Suite

Michael Garrity — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:00:00 GMT

At this week's Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London, hot on the heels of the release of Creative Suite 6 and the Creative Cloud, the software company announced three new products.

Each release is aimed at helping marketers “Build compelling personalized experiences that address complex digital marketing problems,” says Kevin Cochrane, Adobe's vice president of enterprise marketing.

Content management on the Web is fundamentally changing and it was with that in mind, Cochrane explained, that Adobe crafted a set of new products to help digital marketers focus on creating not only compelling content but also compelling user experiences. He identified three primary issues that digital marketers face in the current environment.

The first is, obviously, driving revenue growth, especially with consumers who seem to become increasingly indifferent toward online advertising. On today’s Web, users are interested in targeted, personalized experiences, or they’re not interested at all.

The second consideration Adobe made was with regards to marketing budgets, specifically ensuring that every dollar spent on a digital marketing campaign is spent wisely. Thus, Adobe's solution is designed to help marketers optimize their spending by measuring and analyzing the impact of their efforts to determine the most efficient places in which they spend.

Finally, Adobe wanted to find ways to monetize a marketer’s audience by making each user they reach a valuable asset in driving conversions.

The resulting products were Adobe CQ 5.5 Social Communities, CQ eCommerce and CQ Cloud Manager.

Cloud Manager
A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) app for businesses to quickly launch marketing initiatives in the cloud, providing access to an integrated set of Web Experience Management (WEM) services for the creation, management, measurement and optimization of user-personalized experiences on websites, mobile devices and social media.

After starting a marketing campaign, Cloud Manager lets users remotely control a complete digital marketing solution from the cloud, leverage capabilities available through a rich partner ecosystem and monitor Adobe CQ and cloud infrastructure using real-time metering capabilities, among other handy features.

E-Commerce
An integrated solution that also leverages Adobe’s WEM platform. eCommerce manages and optimizes the buying process for websites, mobile devices and social media by delivering a branded, personalized experience incorporating the hybris multichannel commerce software.

Extending the reach of personalized digital marketing campaigns across these channels allows marketers to present a targeted experience to consumers from the point-of-engagement to the point-of-sale, regardless of the device they’re using. In addition, e-commerce sites and apps can be delivered on-premises or from the cloud, and using eCommerce in tandem with Cloud Manager lets marketers speed the creation of branded, personalized e-commerce sites that continuously scale to meet demands across all channels.

Social Communities
Marketers can better leverage social engagement across owned digital properties to build loyalty and drive conversions. Information from leading social networks (gathered, again, over multiple channels) helps organizations make a social connection with users by allowing them to log into their Facebook or Twitter accounts, and then use their profile information to personalize the consumer’s experience.

This product can also be used with other sources, like a CRM or website profile, to create a more comprehensive view of each unique customer.

Plus, new social plugins make it possible for customers to share content with their friends, making every new customer a potential brand advocate, and immediately increasing each consumer’s value. Using this solution with eCommerce lets businesses embed social elements into the product selection and purchasing processes of their owned properties.

This new suite of digital marketing products has been built to appeal to each unique consumer’s interests from the beginning, and then maintain that personalized experience throughout the purchasing process to increase the chances of conversion, maximize the value of the money spent and, with any luck, create a lifelong customer and brand advocate.

Adobe Releases CS6; Creative Cloud Coming Friday

Linc Wonham — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:15:00 GMT

Adobe has announced the immediate availability of Creative Suite 6 software, which includes the new releases of Photoshop, InDesign, lllustrator, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash Professional and other products. The CS6 product line also includes four suite versions – Creative Suite 6 Design & Web Premium; Creative Suite 6 Design Standard; Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, and Creative Suite 6 Master Collection.

Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription-based, new way of providing tools and services for Web designers, is expected to be available on Friday.

“We announced Creative Cloud and CS6 two weeks ago and these releases have caught the imagination of creatives everywhere,” says David Wadhwani, Adobe’s senior vice president of digital media business. “Today we're shipping CS6 and look forward to the beginning of an exciting new era as we introduce Creative Cloud later this week.”

Top new features across the CS6 product line include the following:

• New levels of performance with tools that take advantage of Adobe Mercury Graphics functionality.

• Enhanced user interfaces designed to simplify workflows.

• New capabilities designed to streamline the creation of responsive content.

Adobe Creative Cloud membership delivers the following services:

• Access to download and install all CS6 applications, new HTML5 desktop products – Adobe Muse 1.0 and Adobe Edge preview – and deep integration with Adobe Touch Apps.

• Easy storage and sharing of content across desktop, mobile devices and the cloud.

• Integrated website publishing and hosting.

• Ongoing innovation that provides members with the most up-to-date products and services.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Creative Suite 6 products are immediately available through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store in North America and Adobe Direct Sales. Estimated street price for the suites is $2,599 for CS6 Master Collection, $1,899 for CS6 Production Premium, $1,899 for CS6 Design & Web Premium, and $1,299 for CS6 Design Standard. Upgrade and education pricing as well as volume licensing are available. More information is available here.

Adobe Creative Cloud membership is available to customers in 36 countries and in multiple languages. Pricing for Creative Cloud membership for individuals is $49.99 per month based on annual membership and $74.99 per month for month-to-month membership. A special introductory offer of $29.99 per month for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 individual customers is also available. Education pricing is available. More information is available here.

Live: Adobe Launches CS6 and Creative Cloud

Michael Garrity — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:28:00 GMT

It looks like it may be a monumental day for one of the world's most important software company.

Today marks the official general release of Adobe Creative Suite 6, the latest major update to the company's popular toolkit for design, Web and video professionals. Furthermore, CS6 will be an integral part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, the new subscription-based offering for creating, sharing and delivering creative work using cloud technology that also launches today.

The Creative Suite update will feature the new release of 14 CS6 applications and four distinct suites: Design & Web Premium, Design Standard, Production Premium and Master Collection. Adobe Photoshop, the company's most popular software, will of course see some major improvements, including new content-aware moving and patching tools and video editing, which is a pretty huge development. Adobe is also adding new drawing, text and perspective tools and improving its performance speed.

The Creative Cloud will make all CS6 apps available for download to subscribers, as well as online services for sharing and publishing content created using the Creative Suite. Creative Cloud will allow Adobe to offer periodic updates for subscribers, as well as mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices. It will provide 20 GB of online storage while syncing CS6 files between user devices.

And you don't have to take my word for it, as Adobe will be streaming a special press conference at 1 p.m. Eastern time today. If you're as excited as we are about this huge announcement, stay here as we provide live coverage of the event!

12:03 (Central Time): After an opening video package about the importance of creativity, the presentation is about to begin.

12:04: Out comes Shantanu Narayen, Adobe's President and CEO. He reiterates how big of a day this is for the company, and that we all share a calling to create and share our creations. I sense a theme...

12:07: Adobe apparently is seeking to close the "gap" between the creative economy and the tools available to creators.

12:10: Narayen has referenced consistency and platform-agnostic creation platforms. This will likely be a big part of the integration between CS6 and the company's "most ambitious offering ever," the Creative Cloud.

12:13: Here comes the good stuff. Already discussing the rise of smartphones, tablets, Facebook and applications. These new considerations will impact every aspect of content creation and publishing.

12:16: Four things about CS6:
1. Enormous strides in performance (some things up to 100 times faster)
2. An enhanced UI for user experience to reduce clutter and focus on content without disrupting how many users already work
3. Built for easy mobile development
4. "Killer Features," aka, what we're all looking forward to hearing about

12:20: Demo time! How to build a digital catalog for tablets. Starting in Photoshop CS6, with a darker UI (which can be made darker and lighter by the user), which now "patches" up areas where images are moved. This is really cool, as the program now fills out the background when content is moved around inside an image.

12:23: Photoshop is now aware of what kind of camera lens was used to take a picture, and can automatically adapt to suit it. "Content-Aware" is clearly the focus of the new Photoshop.

12:25: Using a swirl feature to show just how fast and responsive Photoshop is now, even when working with huge files!

12:26: On to Illustrator CS6! They're now working on developing images for a website. The program can take an image (or group of images) and turn them into a pattern to be used as a site's background image.

12:30: Looking at video with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and After Effects CS6.

12:31: After Effects now offers 3D understanding of some content's shape within a 2D image. This is a very "abstract" idea, but basically it allows creators to "pull out" a 3D image to add content to the background of a video without obscuring models or other content.

12:36: Using Dreamweaver, users can get a preview of their desktop websites, but also get the chance to preview their tablet and mobile versions as well. This helps make decisions about what content they should add and remove to optimize the site's design across these platforms. Highly "responsive" technology at play.

12:38: Now we're going back to creating a catalog app. Images are created initially in InDesign, and can be customized for specific devices once they're finished. "If you're not a designer and this looks pretty obvious, it should. That's the point." Any changes made in InDesign can be updated automatically and will be visible on tablets.

12:40: So that was a pretty general outline of what creators can do with the new CS6 tools. But now we're moving on to bigger things. Creative Cloud will apparently give users full access to the "best design tools in the world" (CS6), and they will be accessible from any device around the world. It also allows them to store and share their content, as well as publish applications and websites...again from anywhere on any device. Best part? Regular updates to existing (and new) services. This is an "ongoing" program. It's going to cost $49.99 per month for an individual subscriber.

12:45: Current CS 3-5 users will be able to sign up for the Creative Cloud initially for an introductory price of just $29.99 a month for the first year.

12:47: All cloud-based files will exist on and be downloaded from the Creative Cloud website, so we're looking at that first. In the "Apps and Services" section, users will get access to every desktop app included in CS6, as well as all of the Creative Cloud services. This includes up to 20GB of storage, a full TypeKit membership and the ability to host up to five different websites. Talk about "feature rich."

12:50: We're getting a look at how to install apps from the Creative Cloud with the greatest of ease. One of them is Creative Cloud Connect, which essentially gives a user access to their Creative Cloud subscription to see how many gigs they've used and gives them access to their content.

12:52: This speaker is explaining that Creative Cloud is about more than just keeping devices in sync. It's about adding value to the creation and collaboration process, and it does that because it is able to understand what files are all about.

12:55: Now we're looking at the tablet version of Photoshop, which comes with an icon to allow for simple access to the Creative Cloud. Photoshop Touch looks similar to desktop Photoshop, but more stripped down, or at least more compact. One awesome feature is the ability to snap a photo with a mobile device and open it right up with Photoshop Touch. Users will be able to easily pull content out of one image saved in the app and place it in another image as a layer. Then, once a user saves it, the image automatically syncs up to the Creative Cloud.

1:00: The image edited on an iPad with Photoshop Touch was opened up on a desktop version of Photoshop using the Creative Cloud. Users can now add comments to share with their collaborators, which takes creative communication to the next level. Again, this is utilizing some very responsive technology to make the creation and publishing process seamless.

1:03: Introducing Muse, a new feature only available with the Creative Cloud for website creation. The speaker is showing us how to use content created in Photoshop to create a slideshow for a website, which looks extremely easy. This new program is also going to be integrated with TypeKit, so creators can include "Web Fonts" into their pages. In one click, pages can be updated to a microsite in just seconds.

1:10: Users won't even have to download these desktop apps to be able to access and view files on the Creative Cloud website, which will make sharing even easier.

1:11: To finish the presentation, they're showing a video highlighting the additions Adobe is planning on adding to the Creative Cloud in the coming months, including community galleries to view and share files, new touch apps, access to Lightroom and the PhoneGap Build service, which lets users upload their apps into the Creative Cloud, where they will be transformed into a suitable app for every major mobile operating system. Users will also eventually get access to the Digital Publishing Suite to create highly advanced apps.

Video Advertisers Want to be Stuck in the Middle

Allison Howen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:00 GMT

A new study from Adobe reveals that video ad consumption is beginning to imitate that of traditional television commercials.

This is because mid-roll ads, which have the most similar placement to that of a television commercial (directly within the middle of a video), are dramatically outperforming both pre-roll (advertisements before a video) and post-roll (advertisements after a video) ads. This is good news, or course, for media companies because it could open the door to greater revenue potential.

“Market research shows that over the next five years the number of people watching video content online could grow as much as 50 percent, and a significant number of them will be doing so on connected devices like tablets, IPTVs and smartphones,” says Jeremy Helfand, vice president of monetization at Adobe. “For professional content owners and media companies exploring TV-like ad experiences online, the latest data demonstrates the strong potential for extending traditional broadcast advertising dollars to digital video.”

According to the study, mid-roll video format remains the most engaging placement for online video ads, and easily outperforms completion rates of both pre-roll and post-roll ads. Currently, mid-roll ads average an 87-percent completion rate, which surpasses pre-roll ad engagement by nearly 30 percent.

Other statistics reveal that mobile devices receive the highest engagement of any other channel, at 94 percent, which suggests that mobile viewers are more engaged and open to watching ads on the go in exchange for their desired content. Aditionally, 76 percent of viewers are more likely to consume ads within professional content, which is higher than the average completion rate of 63 percent for user-generated content (UGC).

Furthermore, live online events also recieve higher ad engagement compared to video-on demand (VOD), averaging an 85-percent completion rate for video ads, which is 23 percent higher then ads within VOD content.