Adobe Summit EMEA, The Digital Marketing Conference, opened in London today at 9:00 a.m. local time with a keynote address by Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of the Adobe Digital Marketing business.  Over the course of the two day event, Summit participants have the opportunity to learn from the industry experts and network with savvy professionals who continue to push the boundaries of digital marketing and advertising, ultimately making their businesses more successful.  Keynote speakers from high-profile brands like UniCredit Group, Nike Global, AKQA, Nissan Europe, Deloitte digital, BBC, SAP and SapientNitro DACH highlight the agenda, and record-setting Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper, Felix Baumgartner, will open the general session on Thursday.

We released several news announcements at Summit today including:

1. News about a powerful new capability in Adobe Social that predicts social content performance on Facebook to maximize engagement and ROI.
2. Details of an expanded global partnership that integrates Adobe Marketing Cloud with SapientNitro’s EngagedNow platform.
3. An efficient means to conquer the webinar process from within Adobe Experience Manager.
4. Results of the Adobe Digital Index State of Mobile Benchmark Report 2013, including detail on 1) how Samsung smartphones are gaining popularity with Europeans and 2) how iOS has re-emerged as a leader in US smartphone browsing and dominates on tablets.

Adobe Marketing Cloud has fast become the solution that helps marketers get from data to insights to action, faster and smarter than ever. Here are some expanded highlights:

Adobe Social Unveils Predictive Publishing for Facebook

This powerful new predictive publishing capability for Adobe Social, which predicts social engagement on individual pieces of content and automatically suggests ideal timing to improve how that content will perform, will offer Facebook integration with the initial version.  Additional social platforms will be added later in the year.

Adobe and SapientNitro Expand Global Partnership

Adobe and SapientNitro’s expanded global partnership includes integration of the Sapient EngagedNow^SM platform with Adobe Marketing Cloud.  This integrated offering provides a solution for creating, delivering and optimizing consumer experiences across Web, social, mobile, and digital displays. NASCAR, E.ON and VISIT FLORIDA are among the organizations already seeing significant results using EngagedNow with Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Additional benefits for customers include:

• Complete hosted and managed services for Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions from SapientNitro with EngagedNow
• Ready-to-use integrations built specifically for key verticals, including travel, sports and entertainment, retail, and financial services, that help make development and deployment more efficient
• Built-in operational efficiencies from the integration of EngagedNow and Adobe Marketing Cloud that streamline creative, delivery, and measurement workflows for better performance and cost savings

Conquering the Webinar Process – from within Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager webinars, powered by Adobe Connect, helps marketers 1) easily create targeted webinar landing pages that drive registration; 2) deliver immersive online events that engage audiences, build brand and drive demand; and 3) deliver post-event analytics via capabilities from Adobe Analytics.

Adobe Digital Index State of Mobile Benchmark Report

The report analyzes 150 billion visits to 1,500+ websites to provide an overview of how consumers are using mobile devices worldwide.  In addition to trends in social media, video content consumption and ecommerce from the past 12 months, the study features key findings on which mobile operating systems and device manufacturers are helping drive the most web traffic globally.

Samsung smartphones gain popularity with Europeans

In the 19 European countries analyzed, nearly 30% of all smartphone browsing now occurs via a Samsung device – up 9% from last year.

iOS has re-emerged as leader in US smartphone browsing and is dominant amongst tablets

The iPhone has been gaining ground since being offered on the Verizon network (February 2011), and again became the primary driver of smartphone browsing in the US during Q4 2012, after trailing Android phones for two years. In addition, iPads accounted for nearly early 80% of all tablet browsing in the US in February 2013, up 10 percent from last year.

The best part of my job is hitting the road to hear about what’s on the minds of our customers, partners and employees.  In the past two months I’ve clocked more than 34,000 air miles doing just that.   From the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to the World Economic Forum in Davos, from London to Sydney to New York, Digital Marketing has been on the mind of every CEO I meet. It has definitely gone broadly into the mainstream and into the boardroom, well beyond the confines of the web team.

Most recently, we had three terrific days in Utah at the annual Adobe Digital Marketing Summit where 5,000 people gathered to hear about the latest innovations in digital marketing solutions. Every company needs to become a digital-first organization and I spoke about the three marketing mandates that I believe all companies need to focus on:

1)      Engage everywhere – Gone are the days when your digital strategy is just about driving customers to your website and converting them. Whether it’s app stores or retail stores; on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest; on a PC, phone, or laptop; you have to go to your customers or they won’t come to you.  Successful marketers are integrating all channels to engage their customers wherever they are.

2)      Embrace rocket science – Every business is swimming in data, and many are struggling just to get backward-looking reports.  But the real value of data is predictive, harnessing math and machine learning to take marketers’ intuition to a whole new level.  Many of our customers are already doing this with Media Optimizer today, where you can predict the optimal media mix and automate the buying across display and search advertising. The next frontier is to take all of your marketing – across social, mobile, web, real-time, historic, qualitative, quantitative – and reliably predict and execute the perfect campaign to maximize sales.  That is rocket science becoming real.

3)      Connect the dots – Organizational change needs to happen internal to every company in order to thrive in this new digital age.  I live this every Monday morning at 9 am when I have the team report to me on their metrics. The product organization, marketing organization and sales and finance are working together to drive the results in a way that never used to happen.

Thanks to everyone who made Summit such a great event.  Next up: Adobe MAX in LA.  I’m excited to hear what our community has to say about the future of creativity!

I just passed my one-month mark after rejoining Adobe to head up corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions.  It’s a unique perspective, having spent 14 years helping build Adobe’s creative business and then going off to lead teams in consumer internet, social and mobile companies before returning here.  Adobe is the great company that I remember:  incredible innovation, talented people, and the coolest customers anywhere.  But it’s a company that has changed in many ways. As I come back in with fresh eyes, I thought I would share some of my observations.

It’s a whole new world when it comes to the creative professional and their work.  Back in “the day” in our creative business, we spent most of our energy building kick-ass applications that helped creative professionals move from traditional to digital workflows while navigating the complexities of the desktop Mac and Windows platforms. Our customers were primarily focused on delivering great print or web content.  Now with the explosion of mobile, creatives need to make sure their experiences scale to hundreds of smartphones and tablets, not to mention TVs, car dashboards and in-store kiosks.  The challenge is staggering, both for creatives and Adobe, but there has never been more demand for compelling content.  (That’s a good thing!)  And with the advent of powerful mobile platforms, EVERYONE wants to be creative as they capture, enhance and share their daily experiences.

Enter the cloud.  With cloud computing, customers are quickly learning (and expecting) to engage with us 24/7 and need our product offerings to go further in addressing a broader range of challenges, well beyond content creation.  As a former product manager, I remember the team’s frustration when they were forced to hold back features to fit our 18-month Creative Suite product cycle.  It was very difficult to deliver new innovations “off-cycle” due to our delivery and accounting model. (Every desktop software company struggles with this same challenge.)  Nothing is more satisfying to one of our talented engineers than getting a new product feature into the hands of customers quickly, and now we can.

But Creative Cloud is so much more than a mechanism for getting new product features in the hands of customers faster.  It will be the hub for creativity worldwide and enable you to work when and where you want.  It will be where creative communities gather to be inspired by each other’s work and collaborate on projects.  Our recent acquisition of Behance, the leading online social media platform for creatives, accelerates Adobe’s strategy to bring great community features to Creative Cloud.  You’ll see us begin to integrate Behance with our creative tools in the next few months and in the meantime Behance will continue to be a key showcase for creativity.   Check out their awesome blog highlighting some of the coolest creative work out there.

Some customers have given us their perspective on Creative Cloud in the video below and we promise that we’ve only just started.   Indeed, all the innovation that we have planned for Creative Cloud will make Adobe MAX, the Creativity Conference, a must-attend event.   It’s in Los Angeles May 4-8.  We hope you can join us.

Finally, it’s been exhilarating to get involved with a whole new set of customers with Adobe Marketing Cloud.  We have long focused on content creation for the world’s leading marketing departments.  Now we’re extending that value to helping marketers manage and optimize consumer experiences across every touchpoint, from their websites to the social realm. Last week I attended our Summit conference and spoke to dozens of digital marketing customers about the possibilities as our Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud come together for better collaboration across teams and agencies.  This is really where the creative rubber hits the road, from my perspective – showing the business return from all the amazing content created with our tools.

With my little “walkabout” behind me, I can honestly say that I’m thrilled to be back in the saddle at Adobe and am particularly excited to engage with our new customers and see how many familiar ones are still with us on this journey!

People know Adobe for many reasons, many of which revolve around our technologies that help creative professionals bring their ideas to reality and that enable marketers to create and drive industry-leading campaigns based in smart math. At Adobe Summit this week in Salt Lake City, we are talking about our technologies and the future of the industry, and we have specials guests sharing some incredible stories of overcoming tremendous personal and professional challenges to do something amazing. But we also had the opportunity to share a side of Adobe that isn’t talked about as often as our technology.

Today, at our Digital Marketing Summit, we heard from a great mind – Sal Khan about the idea of breaking down barriers to revolutionize whatever you are passionate about. His work and the vision for the Khan Academy, a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere, inspired us and evoked a standing ovation from the Summit crowd. In one of those rare moments where I had the opportunity to proudly represent all Adobe employees, I announced that Adobe is donating $50,000 to the Khan Academy to further its groundbreaking approach to education and community change.

That was an incredibly special moment to be able to share with our customers and partners. Beyond our technologies, Adobe has a philanthropic side that does meaningful and inspirational work, but that at times takes a backstage to Adobe’s business initiatives. Adobe Youth Voices represents this side of Adobe, and was created to ignite creative confidence in youth, empowering them to find their voice and make it heard. To date, Adobe Youth Voices has created opportunities for over 120,000 youth. We have a vision of a world where the future creative and mathematical minds of tomorrow are not hindered by circumstance but have endless opportunities to succeed.

Beyond Adobe Youth Voices, our broadly reaching Adobe Foundation is funded by Adobe to leverage human, technological, and financial resources to drive social change and improve the communities in which we live and work. The Adobe Foundation supports innovative programs that further its mission and goals, and we are proud to support Khan Academy as a partner in creating opportunities for the world’s youth. I’m pretty excited about it and speak for all 11,000 Adobe employees in saying that we believe the work we do to better humanity is the most important work we can do.

Ok yes maybe I work at Adobe and ok yes maybe I’m a tad biased, but I’ve been going to Adobe Summits for I think four years now and dare I say this one is the best? Yes, the food at the opening night party was good. Yes, from an event team’s standpoint things are running smoothly, but from the overall “relevance” standpoint, this year’s Summit has started off super strong.

The social conversations from the event are unparalleled, growing more than 50% when compared to the same timeframe last year. Over 8500 conversations in just the first day put #AdobeSummit at the top of trending Twitter hashtags.

Brad Rencher kicked it all off with the opening keynote session (watch now), which included a thorough demo of Adobe Marketing Cloud by David Nueschler and folks from all five of the Marketing Cloud’s solutions teams. Need a rundown of what’s coming in Marketing Cloud? Check out this week’s news.

The day’s second keynote had its moments too. After Bill Briggs of Deloitte Consulting implored everyone to go beyond “mobile first” and think of “mobile only,” John Battelle interviewed Adam Bain of Twitter about Twitter growth, and paid social media vs organic social media. Good stuff. And the conversation continued to prove to this social marketer (me) that Twitter might be a brand’s best bet for proving ROI in social — paid and organic. Happy to discuss further in the comments.

Need some visuals of what the first full day of Summit was all about? Watch the videos below. Short and to the point, with quick looks at what Summitees are experiencing here in Salt Lake City, and be sure to follow all tomorrow’s action: @AdobeSummit and #AdobeSummit.

This week at Adobe Summit – The Digital Marketing Conference, more than 4,500 digital marketers and senior leaders representing the world’s top brands are coming together in Salt Lake City to learn the latest about marketing trends, network and share best practices with each other.

At the conference, we are making a series of news announcements to address growing industry needs that include:  1) helping marketers iterate and act more quickly to better meet consumers’ expectations; 2) staying on top of the mobile explosion and delivering better mobile experiences; 3) simplifying the complex task of delivering the right experience or content to the right person at the right time.

Keynote presenters this year include Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and SVP and GM of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business, Brad Rencher, along with record-setting stratospheric daredevil Felix Baumgartner; Adam Bain, president of global revenue at Twitter; and Sal Kahn, founder of Khan Academy.

You can watch the keynote live today, Wednesday, March 6 from 9am-11am MST.

Our news today highlights major new Adobe Marketing Cloud capabilities, including:

New Touch Interface and Mobile Marketing Capabilities 

Adobe today unveiled an innovative new UI for Adobe® Marketing Cloud that surfaces data and insights to marketers and business leaders so they can easily gauge the impact of their marketing dollars.  Through this visually rich, touch based interface, Adobe Marketing Cloud, which marketers use to understand how campaigns are performing, now links with Adobe Creative Cloud™, which agency creatives use to build and deliver those campaigns.  In addition, every solution within Adobe Marketing Cloud has been upgraded with new mobile marketing capabilities, including new mobile capabilities for analytics, advertising, social app development, targeting content on smartphones and tablets, and mobile content management and delivery.

Adobe Social Goes Mobile 

Adobe today upgraded Adobe Social®, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, with a completely redesigned user interface focused on interpreting and presenting social data in a more digestible format that helps social marketers prove business results.  Adobe also debuted Adobe Social for mobile phones and tablets.  Social marketers now have a marketing tool that’s as mobile as they are.

Delivering Personalized Experiences across Mobile and Social 

The static website is long gone.  Personalizing and optimizing your customer’s experience is essential.  Adobe today announced a major update to Adobe Experience Manager, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, which introduces new responsive design, social communities and video capabilities that deliver a fully personalized experience to customers. In addition, Adobe today introduced a new Digital Asset Management offering within Adobe Experience Manager.  Adobe has re-imagined digital asset management with both marketers and creatives in mind, giving organizations unprecedented capabilities to deliver consistent, high-quality experiences anywhere.

New Digital Advertising Solution for Media Agencies and Marketers 

Adobe today unveiled a standard version of Adobe Media Optimizer, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud. Media Optimizer is Adobe’s digital advertising platform for campaigns across search, display and social media. The new edition, Media Optimizer Standard, delivers a rules-based bidding solution that improves the performance of search engine marketing campaigns through seamless integration with Adobe Analytics. Media Optimizer Standard is designed for media buying agencies, search engine marketing (SEM) agencies and direct advertisers seeking more control and transparency over their campaigns at an economical price point.

Taken together, these groundbreaking new solutions and capabilities are all designed to help our customers deliver the right online experience to the right person . They also offer the best way to tie social media activities to business results. And finally, they enable customers to achieve the greatest return on investment from online advertising.

Adobe Summit, THE digital marketing conference, is set for March 4-8 in Salt Lake City Utah. If you need help to convince your boss to get you there, we have a letter you can use, or just send her this video. It’s a good reminder that Summit is all about adding to your skillset, and not about building your buzzword dictionary.

Note: This post is cross-posted from Mike Dillon’s personal blog. 

I’m in the 5^th grade.

For weeks, I’ve been working on paper mache model of a volcano. With my father’s assistance I discover that a mixture of baking soda and vinegar produces a simulated volcanic eruption. Sweet! I just know that I am going to dazzle everyone at the Edison Elementary School (Alameda, California) science fair and grab first prize. Thinking about it causes me to tremble with excitement as I meticulously paint my volcano and add finishing touches like bits of moss and dirt to heighten the realistic effect.

On the appointed day, I arrive with eager anticipation and proudly place my volcano in its designated spot and set up the cardboard backdrop explaining the principles of volcanology.  Then I stand by and wait for the crowds to assemble and marvel at my work.

But, they don’t.

Instead they are huddled around Frank Rodgers’ project which has something to do with the effect of zero gravity on plankton and Jennifer Taylor’s working demonstration of water desalination plant. What the heck is “desalination”?

Looking with embarrassment at my volcano, I made the decision on the spot – I was not cut out for science or engineering.

This week, I renewed my deep appreciation for people who followed those career paths when I attended the Adobe Technology Summit. This is an annual internal company event where members of our engineering community meet in person to share information about current and future products and technology.

I love attending these types of events as they force you to pull yourself up from the day-to-day and take a look at the what’s coming over the technology horizon. For example, are you ready for 3D printing? How about using your fingers as simulated paint brushes to create beautiful art on a tablet computer? Or taking a photograph with your mobile device and having it create a color palette for use with any creative project? What if you could push a key on your computer and bring into focus a blurry digital photograph that you snapped at a friend’s birthday party?

At each session I saw mind-blowing advances like these in the way people will express themselves creatively in the digital world to come (or, will be able to express themselves creatively – sooner than we think).

It’s way more fun than paper mache volcanoes.

Our top 12 moments of 2012 countdown continues. We’re closing out the year with the final 6. If you missed part one, you can catch up here.

Moment No. 5 – Cannes Lions

Our team was back at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival this year. We centered the conversation around data and creativity, and a look at creativity ‘Then & Now.’ We had the chance to connect with leading creative professionals and marketers, and even an inspiring entrepreneur, Jordan Casey – Europe’s youngest developer.

Moment No. 4 – Digital Marketing Summit

We hosted two Summits this year – one in Salt Lake City, Utah and another in London, England. Both Summits focused on ways customers can better measure, manage and optimize their digital marketing investments. Our Salt Lake City event boasted speakers such as Biz Stone, Arianna Huffington, and the Grammy-winning band, Foster the People. Check out a recap of our favorite moments on our Digital Marketing Summit blog.

Moment No. 3 – Social Media Week

Our CMO, Ann Lewnes, kicked off Social Media Week at Adobe with her keynote, “Confessions of a Digital Marketer.” Throughout the day, we hosted great conversations about the impact of big data on social media with guest speakers Jeremiah Owyang and Susan Etlinger from Altimeter Group, as well as other social practitioners from across the Silicon Valley. Check out our image ‘Bird’s Eye View of Social Media Week,’ and revisit some of the event panels and presentations on our Adobe TV channel.

Moment No. 2 – Sundance Film Festival

At this year’s festival, we had a digital reporting team on the ground capturing all of our favorite moments during Sundance. From our panel, ‘How Technology is Influencing Storytelling and Film,’ to movie premieres and even bus rides around town, Matt Rozen and Meagan Keane reported on the sights and sounds of the festival for all of us who could not be there in person in their ‘Adobe at Sundance’ series.

Moment No. 1 – Connecting With You

Our favorite moments every year revolve around connecting with you, our fans. This year, we’ve expanded the ways we can communicate with you where you are. We’ve introduced our presence on Pinterest and Instagram, and expanded our footprint on LinkedIn.

Thank you all for a great 2012. Here’s to an exciting 2013! From all of us here at Adobe, we wish you the very best in 2013.

Calling all digital marketers, advertisers and publishers! Want to learn how to gain a competitive advantage, strengthen customer relationships and extend brand value – and top it off by hitting the slopes? Then you’ll want to book a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah for the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit (formerly Omniture Summit) from March 20-23, 2012!

Attend Summit 2012 to take advantage of up to four days of informative sessions, insightful keynotes from industry leaders, training workshops and numerous networking opportunities exploring the latest trends around social, mobile and web analytics, site conversions, audience and advertising optimization, Web Experience Management (WEM) and implementing multi-channel marketing. More than 70 breakout sessions across eight tracks (Analyst & Reporting, Media Monetization, Mobile, Web Experience Management, Multi-Channel Campaigns, Personalized Engagement, Social, and Tech Track) will focus on real-world customer case studies and how digital marketing data can drive business decisions.

Summit 2012 will also include a customer and partner showcase, opportunities for attendees to connect with Adobe’s Digital Marketing teams, a Summit Bash with a surprise headliner concert and a ski day at the end of the week. Thousands of marketers, advertisers, publishers, agencies and developers across industries will come together to better manage, measure and optimize digital experiences so don’t miss out. Register today and lock-in early bird before Friday, January 13, 2012. Visit the registration, pricing, and accommodations page for more information about special discounts and group passes.

Check out today’s announcement for more details and visit the Summit 2012 website. We hope to see you in Utah next March!