Viacom have been making further moves to secure their future in digital media. Given all of the moves they’ve made this week, we thought it was worth summarising it.
The first recent deal was the one with Viacom doing a multi-part deal with Google. Viacom will provide Google with video clips and commercials for syndication through Google’s AdSense network, with income being split three ways, Viacom; Google; and the Web site owner. Videos from the Viacom group of companies will also sell their videos on Google Video for $1.99.
The day after this Viacom announced that they were going to buy Atom Entertainment (AtomShockwave as was, made up of Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com, AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com). Viacom put $200m on the table for this one.
They’re be adding this to their other recent purchases, XFIRE, Y2M, GameTrailers.com, IFILM and Neopets, placing them all under MTV Networks.
Viacom are experts at delivering messages (TV, films and adverts to you and me) on television and films, and as we can see from the above deals, they’ve caught on that they really ought to be able to do this online too. To try and simplify this, they were looking for a way to smooth the transition of their content to the digital realm.
This brings us to the latest deal, between Viacom and Adobe, where Adobe’s Engagement Platform will be the preferred tool to digitise the content. The two will also ‘work together in developing new media applications,’ which sounds like an interesting idea, sadly no further detail was available.
The upshot of this is pretty bad news for Microsoft and Real as Viacom will be serving all of the online video adverts using Flash Video. Another nail in the coffin for a use of Microsoft’s Windows Media.