The success of any marketing campaign boils down to choices decision-makers must make every day. From the most simple to the most complex, digital marketers have a myriad of decisions to make that have the potential to define, or in more dramatic cases, redefine best business practices. These decisions include two of the most essential indicators of marketing success:

1) Engaging with customers in a personal and authentic way
2) Driving real and measurable business impact

An area of marketing where this is most clear is digital advertising.

Digital advertising is like having a bunch of spinning toy tops to manage. Which one should be tended to first – search, display or social media? Which will provide the best bang for your advertising buck? How do you keep multiple channels going at the same time? The challenge of effectively managing online ad campaigns across multiple channels is one I have heard our customers complain about for years – one that is exacerbated by new, bright and shiny digital channels. Just take social media for example. According to an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s world-wide ad revenue alone is expected to hit $3.8 billion with its share of display ad revenue growing 16.3% in 2011 and 19.5% in 2012. (In case you haven’t heard, social media could be big.) And social media is just one of the dozens of channels the marketer must consider to keep their advertising campaigns humming along.

What’s more, marketers must take into account fundamental changes in the industry as ad budgets continue to shift rapidly to digital channels which are projected to be 26% of ad spend in 2016 according to Forrester Research. To justify and even accelerate this shift to digital, marketers must clearly understand and prove the business impact of their digital initiatives.

Taking the guesswork out of digital advertising is the task we enthusiastically tackle with today’s news of Adobe’s definitive agreement to acquire Efficient Frontier, a leader in optimizing multi-channel and auction-based digital advertising across search, display and social media. With Efficient Frontier, Adobe takes another step towards being the standard for the way marketers create, manage, execute, measure and optimize their marketing and advertising campaigns. Efficient Frontier technology will provide an automated, highly customizable, and algorithmically driven solution to help our customers make better, faster, and more informed decisions to drive effective advertising campaigns.

For our customers, this is nothing short of fantastic news. We are empowering the marketing team to optimize paid search, make informed social ad buying decisions, see the real ROI of social media channels through a social engagement platform from Context Optional, and harness the power of real-time bidding technology for display advertising. In the end, our customers will be able to standardize their digital advertising initiatives on our independent platform for digital ad buying and optimization – making the task of managing those spinning tops easier than ever.

I couldn’t be more excited to offer marketers this powerful solution for managing search, display and social media in today’s digital world. The Efficient Frontier team will be welcomed to the Adobe family as a key addition to the world-class team and help us continue to build on the strong technology stack that makes up our powerful Adobe Digital Marketing Suite and our customers will reap the benefits.

-Brad

Our new Adobe sales office in Beijing, China recently received a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification from the USGBC. It is particularly distinctive as: Adobe’s first LEED certification outside of the United States; being one of only 24 LEED certifications in Beijing; and being one of only 160 LEED certifications in all of China. The certification of our Adobe facility in China underscores the company’s commitment to the sustainability of our global operations.

To reach Gold certification, the team in China worked closely with facilities in the United States to innovate on increasing our sustainability in the Beijing office:

• Reducing water consumption by 88%
• Realizing a 26% savings on lighting energy
• Reducing CO2 emissions by 2,772 KG/year
• Reusing furniture and lighting fixtures as much as possible
• Using “Cool Carpet” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Implementing green housekeeping with green-sealed products and recycling
• Using low-emitting construction materials to maintain a favorable indoor environment

There is always more to be done and we’ll continue to partner with experts from around the world to learn, innovate, and continuously evolve.

2,000 people, 9 countries, 5 languages, over 2 months…

Our hugely successful European launch of Adobe SocialAnalytics reached the end of the line at the St.Pancras Hotel in London last week!

With growing pressure on Marketing Executives to demonstrate value from their social media efforts, we expected strong interest in these launch events. That being said, the sheer volume of registrations and high turnout rates at all the events surpassed our expectations. Thank you to everyone who joined us, we hope you’ve been inspired to take your social media marketing to the next level.

Over the last few months, we have been collaborating with Facebook and were delighted to welcome them as the guest speaker at our German, French and UK launches. Many people requested a copy of the Adobe & Facebook white paper on ‘Best practices for measuring and optimizing the business impact of the Facebook Like button’. Click here if you would like to receive a copy.

If you were unable to attend your country launch but would like to find out more, listen to Neville Hobson interviewing Chad Warren about Adobe SocialAnalytics in this FIR podcast.

There have also been a number of reviews and articles published about the launch events which are worth checking out:

The Social Analytics era is upon us, Clive Roach, cliveroach.tumblr.com
Lanceringen af Adobe Social Analytics, Martine Gjede, atcore.dk
ADOBE DÉVOILE SOCIALANALYTICS : QUE VOUS RAPPORTE VOTRE PRÉSENCE SUR LES RÉSEAUX SOCIAUX ?, François Guéno, labecommerce.com
Social Analytics Tools are Finally Getting Serious, Tac Anderson, newcommbiz.com
How to Market Using Facebook – According to Facebook, Tac Anderson, newcommbiz.com
Adobe SocialAnalytics aims to quantify business benefits of Facebook and Twitter, Khidr Suleman, v3.co.uk
Adobe and Facebook collaborate to prove monetary value of Likes, Lara O’Reilly, marketingweek.co.uk

And make sure you take a look at the photos on Facebook (feel free to tag yourselves!):

4 October 2011 – Amsterdam
6 October 2011 – Copenhagen
18 October 2011 – Zurich
20 October 2011 – Stockholm
26 October 2011 – Madrid
2 November 2011 – Milan
8 November 2011 – Hamburg
9 November 2011 – Paris
10 November 2011 – London

Keep your eye on www.social-optimisation.com for the latest information on connecting social media to business results. We’ll also be updating the site with videos, blogs, case studies, insight from industry leaders and more.

In the meantime, stay in touch with us via @OmnitureEMEA and #AdobeSocial.

At our recent MAX conference, we announced the Adobe Creative Cloud – a groundbreaking initative that we believe will radically redefine the creative process. We’re excited about this new offering – it brings immense value to our customers allowing them to continue creating amazing things in whatever environment they choose.

The Adobe Creative Cloud consists of:

• Desktop Applications — Every tool that is currently in Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, such as Photoshop®, InDesign®, Illustrator®, Dreamweaver®, Premiere® Pro, After Effects®, as well as innovative new tools that are currently in beta, such as Adobe Edge and Muse.
• Touch Apps – Starting with the six Adobe Touch Apps announced at MAX , 2011 – Adobe Collage, Adobe Kuler, Photoshop Touch, Adobe Debut, Adobe Proto and Adobe Ideas.
• Services – A version of Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite for delivering interactive publications on tablets, a tier of Adobe Business Catalyst for building and managing websites, and access to cloud-based fonts for website design from our acquisition of Typekit.
• Community –Collaboration features that allow members to share their creative work with other Creative Cloud members and forums to discuss and inspire new ideas.

We are excited to announce that membership to the Adobe Creative Cloud will be available in the first half of 2012 at a price of $49.99 per month for individuals and $69.99 per month per seat for workgroups, both for an annual plan.

Our move to this membership model allows us to keep our customers up to date with the latest Adobe innovations in our tools and related services. Creative Cloud will provide maximum flexibility, offer lower cost of entry, and add cutting-edge innovation on an on-going basis to keep our customers ahead of the changing technology and device landscape.

For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

There is a tremendous shift happening around content creation, distribution and monetization. The Adobe Creative Cloud initiative has the potential to transform creativity as designers and developers look to create the best experiences across devices and platforms, while integrating tablet devices and cloud-based services into their workflows. I’m very excited about what this means for Adobe and our customers and look forward to providing the latest tools and services that enable them to express their creativity in new ways.

David

Henry Ford advocated his “one size fits all” strategy on Model T production when he said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”*

Eighty-nine years later, companies are embracing the idea that each customer is unique and deserves relevant, personalized experiences and product options. What’s driving this? We are living in what Forrester Research calls the Age of the Customer, where consumers are empowered with technology to obsess over their desires, and the successful companies obsess over those too. In this recent webinar, Forrester pairs up with Adobe customer – leading U.K. automobile manufacturer – Renault to discuss embracing customer obsession with customization and vivid digital experiences.  Renault even shares successful tactics of its own using Adobe Scene7.

Product customization can be a powerful differentiator and represents an opportunity to deliver greater value, build loyalty and develop one-to-one customer relationships.

“Roll over, Henry Ford. Today, you can have any color you want, as long as it’s the one you want.” — James Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, 2000

*Source: Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work, Garden City Publishing, 1922

The following press releases crossed the wire today:

Adobe Reaffirms Fourth Quarter FY2011 Revenue Target, Restructures to Align Business around Digital Media, Digital Marketing

Adobe to Outline Growth Strategy at Financial Analyst Meeting

For more insight and information, watch the Financial Analyst meeting on Wed 11/9.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the average shopper plans to do 36% of his or her holiday shopping online this year – up 33% from last year! What are you doing to ensure that these purchase-minded shoppers are going to have the most relevant and efficient experience possible on your website and complete their business with you rather than your competitor? We’re now well into our second decade of selling and buying products online, it’s time that digital shopping experiences delivered more – both for the shopper and the retailer. It’s time for informed, intelligent targeted merchandizing.

Merchandising is a well-established, even fundamental aspect of retail marketing. It comprises the many activities surrounding the efforts to accelerate a potential buyer through the purchase funnel to the point where money is exchanged. In a recent white paper written by Sue Aldrich of the Patricia Seybold Group entitled “Success with Best Practices for Targeted Merchandising”, Sue sums it up by saying, “Merchandising is the practice of maximizing sales by leveraging product design, packaging, pricing, display, and most importantly, selection.” Corporations spend tremendous amounts of money and time working to put the right products, information or incentives in the right place at the right time to inspire a purchase – whether it be a large-ticket item or a spontaneous addition to a buyer’s shopping cart.

Although a fair amount of science has emerged from the collective experience of merchandisers, in the offline world, there is always an unavoidable element of inefficiency involved when merchandising strategies are deployed. Because few specifics are known about a customer, a merchandiser needs to cast a pretty wide net in hopes of attracting potential buyers who are prepared or interested in the products or offers presented them.

Targeted merchandising is a form of personalization – the creation of a unique sequence of relevant digital experiences, targeted to an individual or like-minded group of people to inspire them to progress towards a purchase or some similar success event. But whereas we think of personalization as being of primary benefit to the visitor or shopper, turn the tables and think of targeted merchandising as delivering personalized experiences in a way that not only satisfies customer goals, but optimizes the experience for the merchant as well.

In the digital world, the details and data available to a merchandiser open up several opportunities to remove or minimize the inefficiencies of merchandising to a largely generic audience. The data that an online retailer has access to from a digital analytics product such as Adobe SiteCatalyst or a multi-channel analytics product like Adobe Insight, can infuse online merchandising efforts with loads of intelligence regarding online customers’ and prospects’ interests and intentions.

Combining this intelligence with products like Adobe Test&Target, Adobe Recommendations, Adobe Scene7 and Adobe Search&Promote, merchandisers are now capable of delivering targeted content, messaging, cross-sells and offers to the anonymous, yet highly predictive profiles that analytics data provides. Targeted merchandising is all about leveraging these universal profiles – that signal implied and expressed interests and intentions – to present customers with timely and relevant content and offers. For example, with the latest release of Adobe Recommendations, merchandisers can arrange that a shopper who is viewing a specific brand of shoes will see targeted product recommendations for only shoes from that same brand. The product will even help you determine where on the page those recommendations perform the best.

So as shoppers start hitting your site in these crucial weeks to come, think “targeted merchandizing” and remember these three simple things:

• Don’t assume that what works for one shopper works for all
• Let your metrics guide the relevance (and flexibility) of your merchandising
• And, most importantly…pay attention to shopper intent and deliver personalized digital experiences that meet your merchandising objectives.

For an excellent overview of targeted merchandizing best practices, click here to download a copy of Sue Aldrich’s paper, “Success with Best Practices for Targeted Merchandising”.

After a steady period of in-house incubation and private pre-releases, we are pleased to open up Project Adthenticate to the wider online advertising community. This public beta, to help streamline the ad validation and trafficking process for creators and publishers, marks another step in Adobe’s renewed focus on advertising workflows.

I want to use this post to offer some insight into Project Adthenticate and how it came about. Several web media publishers had approached Adobe about friction in getting online advertising campaigns launched. Specifically, there were workflow issues between ad agencies and publishers on campaigns that involved premium inventory and rich media ad creative. As we spoke with various people in the online ad ecosystem, we heard different angles on the same core issue: advertising assets were not built to the appropriate asset specifications. Each side had a different reason for why the ads weren’t built with the correct specifications but the end result was the same — lots of churn between ad creators and publishers which resulted in delays, higher costs, make-goods and lost revenue.

So we put together a small team that conceptualized and implemented an ad validation service that aims to solve the problem of creating ads to the proper specifications needed across the online ad workflow. For online media publishers, the service enables ad operations teams to test advertising assets against their customized ad specifications. The validation service is unique in that it actually executes the content in a sand-boxed environment that captures CPU usage, memory, network requests and scripting commands. The results are then compared against what the publisher can allow for that ad format.

Web service APIs allow the Project Adthenticate service to be integrated into tools and technologies across the online ad workflow: from publisher-side ad servers to ad creation toolkits from rich media vendors and Adobe Creative Suite as well.

The Project Adthenticate public beta is available for the entire ad community to use at adobe.com/go/adops. We look forward to your feedback and to continue making online advertising workflows easier and efficient for the entire ad community.

Today we made some big news with the acquisition of Auditude, a leading ad serving solution for premium Internet-delivered video.

Adobe has great analytics tools in the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite to help marketers and advertisers optimize and measure their campaigns with real-time data and analysis on content usage. The Auditude acquisition goes the next step, offering an innovative video monetization platform that will be a key component of Adobe’s Media Solutions — enabling premium video content owners to maximize the value of their content while providing an optimal experience for consumers wherever that content is viewed.

Audiences are demanding TV-like experiences on their smartphones, tablets and other connected devices, and yet, to date, this really hasn’t come to pass. Today, less than 5% of professionally produced video content is available online.

Now, an integrated Adobe authoring, publishing, monetization and measurement system, will create a dramatically better consumer experience across Internet-connected devices. This is an exciting time for all of us who want to watch more of our favorite TV shows, movies and other premium content online across our Internet devices.

Why hasn’t this happened before? While there have been technical challenges for this migration, these are largely being overcome as advancements in technology continue. What remains are challenges primarily associated with the current business model for online content. Complexities associated with rights management, distribution agreements, data collection and activation, have made online premium content workflows difficult. The new integrated workflow with Auditude’s technology will help tackle these issues and online distribution and consumption of content will be significantly accelerated.

Adobe has a long history of working with publishers and media companies — we’re a trusted provider of tools and technologies that are used to create and deliver rich content and amazing digital experiences. The Auditude acquisition makes perfect sense by helping us provide a more integrated workflow for publishers and media companies to create, deliver, monetize and measure premium online video content.

Additionally, with expected support of mobile, smartTVs, game consoles and desktop devices, Adobe will provide our publisher and media company customers with access to new audiences, through devices that leverage either HTML5 or Flash technology for in-browser and app experiences.

Once Auditude technologies are integrated, the workflow will be easy. Publishers using Adobe InDesign and Digital Publishing Suite products will simply manage advertising within their tablet apps, to drive greater yield and deliver a more customized experience for people. Publishers using Adobe Flash Media Server will be able to deliver both Flash and HTML5 video experiences, seamlessly integrating in-stream video advertising with the premium content on the server side without sacrificing the benefits that come from client-side technologies. This will make the online viewing experience remarkably better, and enable publishers and media companies to automatically adapt to the complexities of a multi-device market.

Big welcome to Auditude where together we will help publishers and media companies create a single workflow so they can increase the amount of great content, reach maximum revenue and ultimately give all of us web video viewers greater access to amazing digital experiences across all of our devices, wherever we are.

The highly anticipated launch of Adobe SocialAnalytics is coming to Europe and seats are going fast!

For the first time ever, it’s possible to directly connect your social media marketing to real business results. Fans and mentions are great, but what really matters is how these impact your bottom line. It’s time to step it up and start seeing the quantifiable value of social media.

We’ve got some great speakers lined up for the launch of our hottest new product, including:

• Julien Codorniou, Head of Platform Partnerships, Facebook
• Andreas van de Castel, Head of International Partnerships, Germany, Facebook
• Gavin Sathianathan, Strategic Partner Manager, Facebook
• Guy Clapperton, Freelance Journalist, Editor, Broadcaster & author of “This is Social Media”
• Chad Warren, Senior Manager, Product Marketing for Social Media, Adobe
• Jeff Jordan, SocialAnalytics Product Manager, Adobe

Register now to be among the first in Europe to see Adobe latest product in action and learn how industry leading companies are already matching their social media efforts to tangible business results.

Zurich – 18 October
Stockholm – 20 October
Madrid – 26 October
Milan – 2 November
Hamburg – 8 November
Paris – 9 November
London – 10 November

Your digital community will be there, you can’t afford to miss out!

Register now: www.social-optimisation.com 

#AdobeSocial