Adapting to the changing advertising landscape

This week we’re delight­ed to join the biggest gath­er­ing of Europe’s mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ty at Adver­tis­ing Week Europe (AWE) in Lon­don, of which Adobe is a proud partner.

This is an excit­ing but also chal­leng­ing time for adver­tis­ers, as is evi­dent by the range and depth of dis­cus­sions at this year’s event.

For one thing, adver­tis­ers face an increas­ing­ly com­plex and frag­ment­ed media land­scape. With lega­cy silos for media plan­ning and buy­ing across TV and dig­i­tal, the mas­sive pro­lif­er­a­tion of devices, and fright­en­ing amounts of data, adver­tis­ing has become over­ly com­plex and even overwhelming.

The data chal­lenge alone is huge. Today cus­tomers have high stan­dards when it comes to brand inter­ac­tions, and brands must deliv­er excep­tion­al expe­ri­ences at scale or risk los­ing cus­tomers to com­peti­tors. The big ques­tion is how they can har­ness the huge amounts of data res­i­dent in their orga­ni­za­tions and make this data action­able across all cus­tomer touch­points, in order to pro­vide these expe­ri­ences at scale. No small task.

Address­ing these two chal­lenges, we have some excit­ing news com­ing out of Adobe Sum­mit in the US this week. Take some time to read about the launch of Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud, which will help mar­keters bet­ter nav­i­gate the increas­ing­ly com­plex adver­tis­ing land­scape by uni­fy­ing and stream­lin­ing the ad plan­ning and buy­ing process. And, togeth­er with Microsoft, we are also excit­ed to announce the devel­op­ment of a new, open indus­try stan­dard for mar­ket­ing and sales data – a stan­dard that will pro­vide com­mon lan­guage for this type of data so that brands can deliv­er dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences at scale.

Anoth­er point of dis­cus­sion at AWE this week has been the role of mar­keters and CMOs. It’s a role that’s chang­ing rapid­ly and enor­mous­ly. We’re no longer brand archi­tects; we’re an inte­gral part of dri­ving rev­enue, too. It’s essen­tial that mar­keters grasp the pletho­ra of tech­nolo­gies that are emerg­ing. With dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion bring­ing con­stant change to our roles, mar­ket­ing AI, dri­ving intel­li­gent cloud and cham­pi­oning cus­tomer expe­ri­ence will become integral.

Last­ly, there’s the now peren­ni­al ques­tion of how mar­ket­ing can mar­ry art and sci­ence, data and emo­tion. Those in the adver­tis­ing indus­try are all aware that emo­tive con­tent is cen­tral to the way that peo­ple engage with their brand. But with organ­i­sa­tions turn­ing their heads to automa­tion and effi­cien­cy, the ques­tion is whether we can cre­ate an emo­tion­al ele­ment. One key take­away at AWE so far this week is that brands and agen­cies must use the tech­nol­o­gy that allows them to do both. For those who can tie the knot, the oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer tar­get­ed, emo­tive con­tent both quick­ly and effi­cient­ly will be considerable.

Very excit­ed to be at AWE this week – and watch this space as we report on more take-outs after the event.