Introducing the future of digital publishing with Adobe DPS

Last week Adobe opened up the new version of their Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS) to selected creative and technical partners

Engine Creative were one of the privileged few creative agencies in the UK to be invited along to a small event to get the heads up on Adobe’s future of digital publishing and access to the Beta version.

When we first started creating digital publishing solutions back in 2012 the emphasis was on enhancing traditional print publications for a digital platform with rich interactivity and device specific functionality; the work we did with TopGear was both market leading and effective in delivering on business objectives. Moving away from the traditional periodical publication of content (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly), the new Adobe DPS hands much more power and flexibility over to content creators and marketers through a ‘continuous publishing’ process.

The future of digital publishing

So, what is continuous publishing? Simply put, it’s the ability to publish new content as and when required without having to wait for predefined deadlines. For anyone familiar with web browsing (so, that’s everyone reading this) then it’s already an expectation when gathering news and information from the web; it’s much more dynamic and fluid than traditional publishing processes and an expectation from digital audiences across the globe.

Whilst continuous publishing is the new norm in our digital lives, this approach is still potentially disruptive for many traditional publishing businesses (from B2C publishers to enterprise B2B publishers and everyone in between). This move comes at the same time as Apple kill off Newsstand and introduce Apple News which looks a lot like existing news feed apps such as Clipboard and my favourite, Feedly.

This approach definitely makes sense for consumers looking to dip in and out of articles and explore different content from different publishers and the new version of Adobe DPS looks set to provide publishers with their own branded app version of Apple News across iOS, Android and Windows platforms.

Investing in Adobe Digital Publishing Solution

By tapping (excuse the pun) into the unique functionality of smartphone and tablet devices (push notification, accelerometer, camera, etc) whilst also giving publishers the ability to manage subscriptions and restricted distribution methods, Adobe DPS has definitely thought about the long-term future of their global leading digital publishing solution; with a team of 150 developers working to develop the platform from the ground up over 18 months this is definitely a serious investment.

The other key difference to the new version of Adobe DPS is the analytics. Publishers and marketers can now carry out A/B testing and segment and target content in greater detail than before. They can also quickly and easily distribute push notifications/messaging directly through Adobe Marketing Cloud and start being far more proactive based on the insights they can from a range of analytics from app launches and article views through to conversion funnels and ad impressions.

Yes it’s still running in Beta and there were a fair few glitches but, on first view this is a big step change for Adobe. As the global leading digital publishing platform, Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS) is potentially taking a big but necessary risk by moving away from a traditional print publishing processes to something much more akin to modern and continuous digital publishing methods. The new version goes public on the 27th of July.

If you’re interested in finding out about digital publishing app solutions for your business or brand or if you need a creative and technical partner to help you through the digital transformation then please get in touch.