Adobe Named the Only Leader in Forrester Wave Report on Experience Optimization Platforms

Today, Adobe was named the only Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Experience Optimization Platforms, Q2 2018 report for its offering in this space, Adobe Target Premium. Adobe received the highest scores in the current offering, strategy, and market presence categories. We also received the highest scores in the online testing, behavioral targeting, and product vision criteria, and among the highest scores in the execution roadmap, performance, and partner ecosystem criteria. The report is based on a thorough evaluation of eight experience optimization platform providers across 24 criteria.

Adobe is no stranger to being designated a Leader. Adobe was also the only vendor named a Leader in last year’s The Forrester Wave™: Digital Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2017 report. In the Experience Optimization Platforms Wave report, Forrester states that “the most advanced enterprise approaches and technologies are integrated into a digital intelligence architecture.”

First and foremost, though, we want to thank our customers, who have partnered with us to grow successful experience optimization programs that span across all of their critical digital touchpoints for more than a decade. It is your work with us, and your valuable feedback, that has enabled us to continue to innovate in this space.

What is an Experience Optimization Platform?

According to Forrester, an Experience Optimization Platform offers “a software solution with advanced capabilities for online testing, behavioral targeting, and recommendation provisions.”

In the report, Forrester identifies that “leading enterprises have moved away from project-based approaches to online testing and personalization techniques,” and that “many enterprises have consolidated these practices into centers of excellence…” Forrester acknowledges that online testing, behavioral targeting, and recommendations have merged within advanced enterprise practices and technology offerings.

Taking it a step further, Adobe sees experience optimization as the combination of customer experience strategy and personalization. It lets our customers easily experiment across all of their digital touchpoints—web, mobile, IoT, you name it—to drive exceptionally personalized experiences that make customers feel valued. This requires much more than a basic A/B testing tool.

What Sets Adobe Apart

In its summary of Adobe, Forrester emphasizes that “Adobe Target scores well across all experience optimization techniques,” and that “the product impresses with its testing and targeting capabilities.” The report also recognizes the Adobe vision of using AI in Adobe Target Premium to enable marketing and data scientists “to optimize experiences within channels and across customer journeys”—a vision that many of our customers are already realizing. Perhaps where it counts most, the report notes “good satisfaction scores for most of the features surveyed” from reference customers.

Interestingly, many of our customers are finding non-traditional ways of using Adobe Target—for example, to provide more personalized customer service and gaming console experiences, or to deliver more personalized financial information to authenticated customers of financial services organizations.

Where Adobe Scored Highest

Adobe Target received the highest scores in the current offering, strategy, and market presence categories—and in the online testing, behavioral targeting, and product vision criteria. We also received among the highest scores for the execution roadmap, performance and partner ecosystem criteria. In addition to the strengths outlined in Forrester’s report, we believe the following reasons contribute to why we score high with our customers:

Leading in Other Areas

We see the recommendations capability of Adobe Target Premium as one of the solution’s most powerful capabilities, allowing our customers to use AI capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei to suggest products, content and services based on visitor behavior, visitor preferences, content similarity, top selling items, previously viewed items, and other criteria. Our customers additionally use recommendations to power suggestions for videos, white papers, technical support topics, and other types of content that don’t fall into traditional retail and e-commerce use cases.

Summing it Up

At the end of the day, our goal is to empower our customers to provide their consumers with the types of experiences they’ll want to have again and again. We’re excited to receive this recognition from Forrester and see it as further validation of our strategy to equip customers to become experience businesses.

Download the full report, The Forrester Wave™: Experience Optimization Platforms, Q2 2018, to learn more.