Introducing Adobe Advertising Cloud
Advertising is one of the largest businesses on the planet. Globally, companies are spending more than $570B a year to generate brand awareness and drive sales through both traditional and digital advertising channels.
One of the biggest trends — and sources of uncertainty — in the advertising business has been the transition from traditional to digital channels. We have all talked about digital transformation across marketing, but nowhere has this change been more dramatic than with digital advertising. Even television — the king of advertising — is shifting to digital buying and delivery processes. It’s still early, but it is happening.
Digital Transformation Is Altering the Advertising World.
This shift is changing how we need to think about and manage our advertising campaigns. You’ve probably heard Adobe’s CMO, Ann Lewnes, talk about how Adobe has managed this journey — by transitioning to spend around 80 percent of our advertising budget through digital channels. We’ve been highly successful in maintaining Adobe’s brand and perception in the market while driving adoption of both the creative and marketing businesses.
The market is evolving to make these changes too, just at different rates. In 2016, digital ad spending accounted for almost $200B of total ad spend — more than one-third of total ad spend. Overall, ad spend is growing at just about 6 percent year over year. However, over the next three years, global ad spending is estimated to grow by $100B — and that will all be driven by digital ad spend.
We recognize that this transition is challenging. As we talk with advertisers, several areas come up as common pain points:
- Aligning Teams and Technology — Teams must work together more closely. Part of that is leveraging technology to deliver connected campaigns. For advertising, that means using a single, seamless platform to create and manage all ad buying.
- Assigning Accountability — A major benefit (and challenge) of digital advertising is that we have never had greater insight into campaign performance. CMOs and advertising teams are on the hook to prove the value or return on ad budgets.
- Doing More With Less — The pressure to deliver more from the same, or even less, is something we all face.
- Leveraging Data in Meaningful Ways — Understanding and reaching both your customers and potential customers is all based on data in digital advertising. If you can’t do this, you don’t have a chance.
Adobe Advertising Cloud Takes Advertising to a New Level.
Even if you’re not directly involved with advertising strategy at your company, it definitely impacts your job. Typically, advertising is the largest line item in any marketing budget because experiences matter more than ever before. Good, effective advertising is critical to your company’s success. It needs to work hand in hand with all other marketing efforts to deliver a connected brand and user experience for your company.
Today, we are launching the Adobe Advertising Cloud — the first independent, cross-channel advertising platform that delivers both brand and performance campaign management across any screen and in any format.
The Advertising Cloud gives advertisers all the functionality they need to plan, purchase, measure, and optimize global advertising in a single software platform that is tightly integrated with the rest of the Adobe Experience Cloud. This means brand and performance campaigns working together under a single platform for the first time — search, display, social, video, and television across all screens and all formats.
Some of the key benefits of the advertising cloud include:
1. Cross-Channel Planning
Adobe Advertising Cloud is the most comprehensive platform for planning, buying, and measuring advertising. Advertisers can reach audiences where they spend the most time — including across search, social, and linear TV. The platform de-duplicates TV and digital audiences, enabling marketers to build cost-effective incremental reach with audiences that were underexposed or did not see an ad.
2. Media Activation
Adobe Advertising Cloud’s seamless integration with Adobe Experience Cloud means that marketers can easily reach discrete audiences across screens. In early tests of the new platform, match rates — meaning, the percentage of an audience segment that an advertiser can actually reach with his ads — exceeded 90 percent, which is double the industry standard. According to the latest Adobe Digital Insights’ “State of Advertising” report, 47 percent of global marketers said that not having an integrated data and media-buying solution was one of their biggest challenges.
3. Performance Without Compromise
While Adobe Advertising Cloud is built to help advertisers achieve their goals, it does so without compromising on brand safety, media quality, or transparency. Advertisers have access to a wealth of tools and safeguards as well as independent measurement.
4. Independence
Adobe Advertising Cloud is the largest independent advertising platform that does not have direct ownership in media or content. Having no media markups or transparent fees ensures Adobe Advertising Cloud’s incentives are always aligned with advertisers.
5. Creative
Once you’ve defined audiences and know how to reach them, what message will be most effective? Through Adobe Advertising Cloud’s dynamic creative-optimization product, advertisers can create powerful, personalized ads based on customers’ interests or past behaviors, allowing them to select the best-performing ad content with confidence.
In Conclusion, I Would Like to Leave You With a Few Key Thoughts to Consider.
- Adobe is in the advertising-technology business. We have been for years. And, with the acquisition of TubeMogul, we have extended our reach and capabilities.
- Adobe Advertising Cloud is a key pillar in making the experience business complete.
- Explore more about how Adobe is helping some of the largest brands in the world create and run more efficient advertising campaigns.
Sukrity Wadhwa
