Facebook platform industry news: Adobe, Wildfire

Adobe

Adobe, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, revealed Facebook Exchange results from its cross-channel ad platform, the Adobe Media Optimizer. It shared that its average CPC is up to 40 percent below the average of all real-time bidded ad supply sources supported by Adobe. One customer reported 50 percent lower cost per registration driven by Facebook Exchange, but cost and reached only a tenth of the of the size a concurrently running search campaign. Adobe’s closed with the indication that its FBX ads can help to convert on search ads at a later time.

Wildfire

Google has announced plans to integrate Wildfire into the DoubleClick platform. The DoubleClick platform is a unified platform put in place to help advertisers and agencies manage the entire breadth of their digital marketing efforts. It provides ad management and ad serving tools. its intention is to help marketers better understand how ad spend is being used. Because, currently, the tool does not have access to Facebook or other social platforms, reporting will be displayed on an aggregated basis. This means that marketers won’t be able to tie a Facebook post’s impression to a display ad click, but will need to correlate the compiled results. With Google’s acquisition of Wildfire, it is continuously looking for solutions to provide a seamless package for managing all online advertising.

Mediabistro Event

Get personalized advice from industry insiders at Facebook, Deloitte, Chartboost, Tango, and more at Inside Social Apps, this Thursday and Friday in San Francisco. Newly added speakers include Val Bauduin of Deloitte & Touche, LLP and Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Products at Facebook, so don’t miss the chance to add these valuable contacts to your network. Tickets are available onsite.

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Adobe allies with Unity for Flash Player 11.2 release, introduces premium APIs

Adobe announced Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2 versions today along with a set of premium APIs for PC and mobile games. The software giant is also collaborating with Unity to create a unified workflow that can deliver Unity games via Flash.

The premium APIs are a combination of the GPU accelerated Stage3D APIs Adobe first announced with Flash Player 11 last fall and fast memory op codes. On mobile via Adobe AIR, developers can use the APIs for free — but on Flash Player 11, the software company takes a 9 percent cut of revenues after the first $50,000. These terms go into effect August 1, 2012, giving developers between now and then to determine if the APIs are suitable for their games. Adobe acknowledges that the majority of gaming content currently created in Flash probably won’t need to use the premium features. Developers do not have to pay royalties on each of the APIs if used alone or on software rendering of Stage3D with or without the op codes.

The Unity collaboration is born of Unity’s own efforts to tap into the Flash audience without players needing to download a plugin. In September of last year, Unity announced that it would support Flash in future versions — which is what prompted Adobe to reach out and work with the company to create a unified workflow that better serves developers. The Unity 3.5 Flash export functionality is currently in preview mode, but beyond that release, Adobe says it’s also working on integrating future Adobe gaming services into Unity. At some point, we may see Adobe partner with other engine creators on similar projects — in October last year, we saw Epic Games’ Unreal Engine running Unreal Tournament on Flash.

Both moves seem like solid ones for Adobe. By introducing APIs as a service, rather than giving them away with a one-time purchases of its authoring software, the company can take a slice of the virtual goods revenues social and mobile game developers enjoy. At the same time, Adobe is also building bridges to console video game developers, providing a way for non-Flash developers to tap into Flash’s broad reach on PCs in the social and casual games space. The Unity collaboration reinforces the approach, and Adobe tells us it’s working with a number of 3rd party frameworks to help developers to reach 2D or 3D content markets.

Interestingly, Adobe is pushing a monetization angle in Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2. By creating a unified platform for desktop and mobile, it hopes to reduce fragmentation in those markets. Adobe also plans to offer analytics and revenue optimization features as part of its game services in the near future — not unlike what we see from Kontagent or Flurry.

While Unity isn’t that common in social games, it definitely has traction in mobile games. CEO and co-founder David Helgason told Inside Mobile Apps earlier this month that mobile developers account for over half of the company’s total business. On Facebook, the healthiest Unity game we’ve seen so far is CMUNE’s UberStrike, which requires a plugin.

You can find out more about the premium APIs and the Unity collaboration on the just-launched Adobe gaming blog.

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Could Adobe Flash 11 make 3D the norm in Facebook games? [Video]

Well, it's certainly a possibility. VentureBeat reports that Adobe Flash, the software used by developers to create most of the Facebook games you play right now, will be updated to Version 11 this October. The new version of Flash will include something gamers, critics and industry folk alike have clamored for: 3D graphics. Namely, 3D graphics with no downloads.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe's goal is to get 3D gaming in front of 1 billion online gamers. Adobe evangelist Andrew Trice said that this new version of Flash can easily integrate with Facebook's social features. This could help bring (in theory) Adobe's vision of "the game console on the web" to life.

"With this milestone release Adobe pushes the envelope of what is possible on the web with a typical PC and opens up a new world of immersive, high-performance gaming experiences," said Adobe VP and GM of Platform Danny Winokur. Adobe should reworded that statement to say "Facebook" rather than "PC," because that's exactly where the company seems to be looking.

Another part of Adobe's announcement worth noting is that through its Adobe Air software, developers will be able to create games that are cross-platform--even on Apple's iOS, which is notorious for omitting Flash support from its iOS devices. This means that (again, in theory) you could enjoy social games that look and play no different on Facebook than on your iPhone.

And they'll both be directly connected, because (for a third time, in theory) they would be the same exact game. In fact, the company looks to have Adobe Air-powered games on over 1 billion mobile devices by 2015. But whether 3D gaming will become the norm on Facebook is ultimately up to the developers, some of which have turned to software like Unity to make it happen.

However, Unity requires a download from the user to work, something not many Facebook gamers are down with. This is especially considering how wary users like FarmVille fans are already of developers potentially encroaching on their privacy. The fact that 3D gaming in Flash will require no download is certainly a boon against its 3D competitors.

If developers take full advantage of this brand spankin' new Flash, it has the potential to push Facebook gaming into the same arena as console gaming. You know, if HTML5 doesn't take off first. The video below shows what your Facebook games could be like in the not-so-distant future with Adobe Flash 11.

[Image Credit: MacLife]

Are you excited that 3D gaming could hit Facebook in a big way? Do you think 3D games could become the norm on Facebook like they have on consoles? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Adobe Unveils Flash Player 11, AIR 3 Software for Next Generation of Social Games

Developer Adobe is ready to release its next suite of multimedia software in the Flash family that’ll take Flash games into new territory on multiple platforms. Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be available on October 4.

Speaking to Inside Network, Adobe Director for Product Marketing Anup Murarka walked us through a slideshow presentation of what the new software can do for games. By the developer’s estimates, more than 70% of all casual games on the web (including those available on social networking sites) are written in Flash. Demands from Flash game developers include improved graphics capabilities, faster download times, quicker rendering, support for more gameplay features, and a smoother cross-platform transition experience. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, Murarka says, addresses many of these demands and ultimately change the nature of Flash game development.

“We’re enabling a completely new generation of apps,” he explains. “Social games have a lot of data that has to get downloaded and it’s got to be rendered. [Cross-platform] development is all siloed and that gets to be an unmanageable cost. And we’ve had mobile developers tell us that they want to port games to desktop and web. You can save time [...] and support a wider range of features with [Flash Player] 11, depending on the platform.”

Graphics are by far the most significant update to the software package. For desktops and connected TVs, Flash Player 11 will support 3D graphics with one thousand times faster rendering versus Flash Player 10. Games can run at 60 frames per second, the rate at which many triple-A console video games run. Murarka says that the APIs are supported on most GPUs and there’s a software fallback so that the games will still work even if the game is running on a GPU Flash doesn’t recognize.

AIR 3 also supports platform-native extensions for hardware and software such that developers could experiment with light sensors or dual screen setups for new gameplay mechanics. Previously, social games have tried with limited success to implement webcam support (e.g. Punch Punch Revolution) and Murarka says it could be possible to enable motion controller support depending on the device and its manufacturer’s policies around creating supporting drivers (e.g. Microsoft’s Kinect controller).

A third feature of the software relevant to social games is captive runtime. This allows developers to automatically package AIR 3 with applications for installation on Android, Windows, iOS and Mac OS so that potential players do not have to leave the game to go download AIR separately. Captive runtime also allows developers to manage version updates to their apps independent of AIR updates made by Adobe.

The big question for social and mobile game developers is whether or not AIR 3 will work well enough for developers to port their Flash 11 games to mobile devices with minimal effort. As Murarka says, costs of cross-platform development are rising as developers either have to invest resources in building native apps for or troubleshooting converted Flash apps on iOS, Android and tablet platforms. Additionally, many developers are also spending resources on exploring new cross-platform solutions like HTML5, which represents an opportunity cost of the time they could spend building new games in a language they already know.

As a success story, Adobe cites Machinarium, an indie game originally developed 2009 as a downloadable Flash game for PCs, Macs, and Linux. Very recently, the game was released on iPad 2 — still built in Flash and repackaged for the iPad interfact. A quote from game developer Amanita Design included in the Adobe press releases say that the studio was able to revamp the game with Flash and get it onto iPads in less than two months. Amamita Design goes on to say that Android and BlackBerry versions are coming soon.

As for the big players in the social games space on Facebook, Zynga also throws in a quote with the press release, saying that the company is “committed to building mainstream entertainment across all devices, platforms and applications, whether it's through Flash or HTML5.” Zynga acquired HTML5 engine Dextrose almost a year ago and continues to develop its games in Flash — sometimes resorting to storing assets on players’ hard drives to handle all of the data its games require players to download and render.

Adobe says that, to date, Flash Player is supported on more than 98% of Internet-enabled PCs. By the end of this year, it expects that Flash-based applications will be supported on more than 200 million smartphones and tablets (including iOS devices) via AIR. By the end of 2015, Adobe estimates that the number of devices that support AIR will hit 1 billion.

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