The Gist
- Generative AI focus at Adobe Summit. Adobe emphasizes its commitment to generative AI across its product lines during the Adobe Summit Digital Experience Conference, highlighting updates to Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud that it says enhance content production and personalization capabilities.
- Adobe’s integration and innovation challenge. Despite Adobe’s innovative strides in generative AI, concerns persist about the complexity and integration of its vast suite of digital experience management tools, which may present a steep learning curve and require significant technical resources for effective deployment.
- Adobe’s market position and future direction. Adobe remains a leader in digital experience platforms, driven by its efforts to integrate generative AI into its ecosystem to improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness. The company’s focus on democratizing AI access and streamlining the content supply chain through innovations like GenStudio reflects its pragmatic approach to addressing customer needs and staying ahead in the competitive landscape, according to one Adobe partner.
LAS VEGAS — Adobe kicked off its Adobe Summit Digital Experience Conference here at the Venetian Hotel hoping for an AI oasis in a desert full of generative artificial intelligence hype.
The San Jose, Calif.-based digital experience software provider unveiled updates Tuesday to its Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud that it says activates generative AI around content production and personalization. It’s all generative AI and content management, all the time here in the desert, to which about 11,000 attendees descended for the weeklong conference.
Adobe said the latest products help users create, deliver and measure customer experiences and expand the Customer Experience Management (CXM) solutions that enterprises use to bring data, content and customer journeys together.
It’s a predictable push for the company that touted a new generative AI model for content creation and creative output last year at this time in the same place — Adobe Firefly. While Microsoft and Google duke it out over AI supremacy, Adobe wants to rule the digital experience software landscape over competitors like Optimizely, Sitecore, Bloomreach and Acquia.
Clearly, at least one of Adobe’s competitors wants to dethrone Adobe in the digital experience software space, well covered in our CMSWire Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) Market Guide, btw.
Pretty sure the timing of the the low-blow @Optimizely ad in Vegas baggage claim isn’t “accidentally” timed to coincide with the influx of #adobesummit attendees ???? pic.twitter.com/tVNK9OWVda
— Tad Reeves (@TurboDad) March 24, 2024
While predictable, Adobe’s push here at Summit to kick things off is smart. Generative AI is high on the minds of marketers — aka Adobe customers. Adobe’s digital media represents most of the company’s business — $14.2 billion — while its digital experience side of the house generated $4.9 billion in the last fiscal year. Publishing and advertising accounts for the final $300 million for the company valued at $229.5 billion.
After all, AI and its impact on marketing is evident now. And certainly will be even more so five years from now, if you ask the world’s foremost thought leaders and software innovators. OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently made a statement that essentially said artificial general intelligence will upend marketing tasks in five years.
Related Article: Adobe Unveils Generative AI Tech and Major Partnerships at 2023 Summit
Can Generative AI Go Beyond Hype, Complexity for Adobe?
Meanwhile, can Adobe help marketers see actionable benefits of such innovations? Or will it just add to its “complex suite of digital experience management tools requiring considerable technical resources to deliver, with a steep learning curve, specialized skill set and training, and longer implementation timelines,” according to this year’s Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms?
“Generative AI enables a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and their customers, creating a transformative moment for business leaders to drive profitable growth while delivering new digital experiences,” Anil Chakravarthy, president, Digital Experience Business at Adobe, said in a statement. “The ability to personalize every interaction has become the key growth driver in Customer Experience Management for enterprises around the world, and Adobe is leading the way in making this a reality with powerful generative AI deeply integrated into existing workflows.”
However, Gartner adds in its DXP Magic Quadrant, “Adobe’s pace of innovation sometimes comes at the expense of integration and alignment across its product portfolio, which creates complexities for its customers.” One must admit — the nomenclature alone is hard to keep up with: Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Experience Manager. Customer Experience Management (CXM) solutions. Adobe Sensei. Adobe Analytics.
Jesús Hoyos, principal consultant for CX2 Advisory, told CMSWire the question will be how all of this integrates to a full AI framework using Adobe’s own Customer Data Platform (CDP).
“This is the ‘promise’ from Salesforce and others,” Hoyos said. “Are we going to have individual AI functionality per application and/or a complete AI framework across all the Adobe ecosystem?”
Related Article: Revolutionizing the Digital Economy: Experience-Led Growth Takes Center Stage
DXP Innovation Amidst Generative AI Evolution
Let’s not get it entirely twisted: Adobe’s on many shortlists, as Gartner says, and its Digital Experience Platform is the leader in its DXP MQ: it’s a “proven and mature solution” known for “deep, broad and innovative product features for external-facing digital experiences” that also includes “one of the most extensive partner channels.”
Eric Schmitt, research director and analyst on the Gartner for Marketing Leaders team, told CMSWire generative AI creates new opportunities for Adobe and its customers to bridge and integrate the two. The latest Summit announcements highlight this theme, he added, and are in-step with emerging buyer needs and opportunities.
“From a practical perspective, Adobe clients and prospects should move deliberately,” Schmitt said. “On one hand, businesses with large creative and content teams are wise to invest in transforming design and production processes. On the other, it is still very early days for generative AI software and for many enterprises, other business-critical priorities — unrelated to creative — compete for investment.”
Adobe competes vigorously in enterprise customer data, analytics and marketing software, offering a wide range of products, he added. When considering either new investments or product migration scenarios, buyers should carefully evaluate which subset of Adobe Experience Cloud products are most relevant to their business goals and use cases, according to Schmitt. “From there,” he added, “current state product capabilities and future roadmaps can be compared with alternatives, to inform sound decisions based on expected financial and other business benefits.”
R “Ray” Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research, Inc., said the main takeaway on Adobe for him is that “Adobe’s taken a pragmatic approach to democratizing access across the enterprise with its offerings. While others are still hypothetical about where they are headed, this stuff is real.”
Adobe Generative AI Innovations at Adobe Summit
Back to Adobe innovations here in Vegas. Here’s the gist of the big announcements from the desert this week:
Adobe Debuts GenStudio
This is a generative-AI application where brands can plan campaigns, create content and manage assets and then activate experiences across digital channels and measure performance.
Adobe Experience Platform Adds AI Assistant
Also new is a conversational interface in Adobe’s enterprise software. Adobe touts that it can answer technical questions and will automate tasks, simulate outcomes and generate audiences and journeys across applications.
Generative AI Infused Throughout Adobe Experience Stack
Adobe is also adding generative AI capabilities natively in applications such as Adobe Experience Manager variant generation, which can instantly create personalized variations of marketing assets, as well as Adobe Content Analytics.
New Capabilities in Customer Journey Orchestration
Adobe Experience Cloud sees innovations that help cross-channel journeys, such as a new unified experimentation capability to test customer paths that maximize conversion and drive reuse of offers across channels.
New capabilities in Adobe Journey Optimizer bring together brand-initiated and customer-initiated interactions within a journey.
Adobe also unveiled Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition, a new enterprise application built on Adobe Experience Platform, designed to enable sales and marketing teams to target specific buying groups within customer accounts.
Adobe Introduces Firefly Services and Custom Models
With Firefly Services, brands can access over 20 generative and creative APIs tools and services, which are capabilities embedded into Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications and can be integrated into any production or experience workflow to scale the production of asset variations.
New Structure Reference Capabilities in Adobe Firefly
Adobe Firefly, a generative AI model, adds a Structure Reference capability in the Text to Image module on the Firefly web application (web and mobile). Users can apply the structure of an existing image to newly generated images.
More on GenStudio: Adobe’s Platform for Content Supply Chain
Early in this conference, there seems to be a fair bit of buzz around the new Adobe GenStudio, which allows users to create content, access brand assets, measure performance of campaigns and more, according to Adobe. It connects across Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud applications and powers marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences.
GenStudio capabilities include:
- Streamlining campaign management with integrated workflow tools: GenStudio integrates with Adobe Workfront, its project management software, for marketing workflow.
- Enhancing creative processes with advanced AI: At the heart of GenStudio’s creative suite is Adobe Firefly, a tool designed to source images and customize visuals for brand identity alignment.
- Asset management for brand narratives: GenStudio introduces a content hub that serves as a bridge to Adobe Experience Manager Assets (its digital asset management system). Users can craft personalized content variations with Adobe Express.
- Optimizing content delivery: GenStudio helps brands tailor their marketing materials for various audiences and platforms.
- Leveraging insights for data-driven decision making: With GenStudio, brands gain access to insights into the performance of their content and campaigns. This feedback loop guides the creation of more effective generative AI prompts.
- Adobe integrations: Integrated with Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, GenStudio offers a view of customer interactions.
GenStudio Builds off Adobe’s Push for Better Integrations
The innovations for GenStudio is part of the reason why Tad Reeves, Adobe Experience Manager architect at Arbory Digital Group, disagrees with Gartner’s assessment of Adobe’s integration challenges.
“I’d entirely disagree with Gartner’s assessment of this integration and alignment on their portfolio,” Reeves told CMSWire. “I don’t think there’s another company that’s putting as much work into trying to turn their tools into an integrated and usable whole, particularly when it comes to the many pieces of the content supply chain.”
Adobe pushed that as a generic phrase over the last two years, Reeves added, but now with Gen Studio, Adobe’s on the right track. It’s expanded the hydration, search, utilization and analytics of their Assets product, and the new capabilities of Workfront for integrating the whole process of design brief through deployment to analysis.
“The whole name of the game has been integration and alignment,” Reeves said. “What Adobe wants partners to know right now is that we’ve moved way out of the ‘cute toy’ phase of GenAI and into how to massively add speed and efficiency to the whole marketing process. I can’t help but also see that most customers I’ve dealt with only use a microfraction of Adobe’s tooling in their marketing process. From Adobe’s view, if they can make the whole process more efficient and effective, that’ll free up budget to use even more of their tooling and processes.”
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