The new Adobe advertising specialization is Adobe’s first multi-solution specialization available to partners

Image source: Adobe Stock.

Adobe has developed a new specialization for agency partners with expertise in Adobe Advertising Cloud Search and DSP, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Audience Manager. For individuals, a new Adobe Qualified Digital Advertising Lead accreditation and badge supports expertise across all of Adobe’s advertising offerings.

Over the last decade, programmatic media buying has gone from a line item to the dominant way of trading and will account for 68 percent of digital media advertising by 2021. The ability to serve more targeted advertising experiences through real-time bidding (RTB), coupled with the ability to now understand how advertising drives business outcomes and ROI, continues to power this exponential growth.

As this growth has accelerated, brands have focused on owning and operating parts of the programmatic media buying function. A recent Accenture and IAB report found that 69 percent of U.S. brands now “in-house” at least some aspects of their programmatic function to gain greater control, transparency, and synergy between their advertising technology and the rest of their business.

The ‘in-housing’ reality

Advancements in software have helped drive in-housing forward, breaking down silos between IT and marketing teams. Analytics for Advertising Cloud is a perfect example of this, with hundreds of leading brands around the world sending rich advertising engagement insights into Adobe Analytics to understand how advertising connects to the entire customer journey. As teams within brands coalesce around a unifying platform, agencies too need to master these tools in order to ensure they are speaking the same language.

This broader expertise is critical for the new brand/agency relationship, and the skillsets brands are demanding of their partners. While “in-housing” created a lot of hype about the future of the agency, the reality is that agencies are still crucial partners for brands across planning, execution, partner management, strategic guidance, and platform expertise. In fact, more than four times out of five, “in-housing” does not refer to all functions of programmatic, with brands opting to maintain a more holistic relationship to link their technology and talent around their business objectives. To put it simply, brands are requiring their agencies to develop deeper connections with their audience and analytics software, to help drive their advertising strategies.

Aligning technology with talent

The most significant barrier to creating this ecosystem is finding and retaining the talent to activate across a broader marketing stack. Nearly three in four brands and agencies agree that finding quality talent with experience in programmatic is a challenge. Without this talent, it is hard to create and maintain a data-driven advertising strategy that can fulfil the promise that programmatic brings and enable an effective marketing function to drive toward business outcomes.

At Adobe, we hear this feedback consistently from brands, which is why we have created a raft of new self-service options to train, scale, and certify the agency partners of the future, and the marketers of the future.

New multi-solution agency advertising specialization

Agency partners can now earn an Adobe Advertising Specialization, which helps verify, validate, and signal a partner’s expertise in Adobe advertising solutions to customers and prospects. The corresponding specialization stripe is a visual validation of an agency’s expertise across all of the functions required for a data-driven media agency today, including Advertising Cloud Search and DSP, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Audience Manager.

Most importantly, earning a specialization requires validation of customer references, and the training of agency professionals across multiple seniority levels and skillsets to ensure that the whole team supporting a brand can deliver results and connected advertising experiences.

New Adobe qualified digital advertising lead badge and training program

Excellence in the technology has always been validated through our Adobe Certification program for business practitioners. However, we have also identified that the marketing director’s understanding of their advertising stack and ability to articulate its benefits is a critical component to removing silos within organizations and setting up effective teams to deliver business outcomes.

To that end, Adobe has also created a new self-service training program and badge for senior digital marketing leaders looking to strategically implement Adobe solutions across audiences, analytics, and advertising. The Adobe Qualified Digital Advertising Lead learning program will give marketing leaders the ability to articulate, understand, and deliver results on the Adobe Advertising stack.

Please visit the Solution Partner Portal to learn more about the new Adobe Advertising Specialization for your organization, or to get started on the Adobe Qualified Digital Advertising Lead learning program. Individuals at brands can also take the Adobe Qualified Digital Advertising Lead course, available in our Captivate Prime learning portal.