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.

Earlier today, Forrester Research, Inc. published “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Digital Customer Experience, Q2 2013” report. Adobe was among the select companies Forrester invited to participate in the independent report, which evaluated 10 Web content management (WCM) products across 100 comprehensive criteria such as vendors’ current offering, strategy and market presence.

Adobe CQ, part of Adobe Experience Manager within Adobe Marketing Cloud, was recognized as the Leader in the report. We’ve posted to our Experience Delivers blog to provide more detail and perspective and have also distributed a press release on the same.

Finally, we encourage you to check out a complimentary copy of the full Forrester report, which we’ve made available here.

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!

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.

Today we made some bold predictions about what the holiday shopping season will look like based on a predictive analysis of Adobe Digital Index data. Specifically, we project that Cyber Monday will be the busiest online shopping day of 2012 reaching $2 billion in sales, growing by 18 percent year-over-year. We’ve leveraged the Adobe Marketing Cloud to sift through big data (more than 150 bil­lion online vis­its to 500+ retail web­sites over the past six years) to understand the shopping patterns informing our forecasts. Want to know exactly how our analysis works? Read more from our Digital Index marketing analyst, Tyler White, here.

Other Digital Index predictions for the season include:

• Black Friday (November 23) is expected to be the second largest online sales day of 2012 when retailers will see a sales increase of 12 percent, year-over-year.
• Sales from mobile devices are projected to increase 110 percent this holiday season compared to last year, with sales from tablets constituting 13.5 percent of total sales, more than double that of smartphones (6.5 percent) and other devices such as e-readers (one percent).
• Out of social media referral sources to retail websites, referrals from Pinterest are expected to grow the most, doubling from seven percent to 14 percent, year-over-year.
• Despite widespread discounts offered during the Thanksgiving weekend, the best deals will actually be found online the week before Christmas, not on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The largest price reductions are expected to come on Free Shipping Day.

To view more of our holiday shopping forecasts, check out our infographic for a graphical representation and our new interactive website where you can slice and dice our predictions alongside real-time data throughout the season and compare various retail metrics such as “conversion,” “online sales,” “average price,” “visits” and more by retail segments and product categories within the U.S. and Europe.

Read what The Wall Street Journal, MediaPost, PCWorld and CNN Money are saying about our news. Happy shopping!

 

There is an exciting transformation happening at Adobe.

We are moving to the cloud with our software, and are in fact building two at the same time. One is a re- imagining of our software for creativity, and the second is creating a new place for marketers to do their work. Part of the magic of these two clouds is how we can connect them, as creative work is an integral part of marketing, and as insights from marketing can drive new creative work. There is no good solution in the world today for this, and we’re very excited to be bringing these worlds together.

Social is a key part of the digital marketing revolution. Enterprise software companies have begun to recognize the importance of this space, and have jumped at the chance to offer social listening solutions. Some are even packaging these solutions into a “marketing cloud”—but the true Marketing Cloud must go far beyond social.

Marketing has evolved over time from a very subjective process to one rooted in data across many channels, and this is driving a revolution in digital marketing. We began betting on the power of this change a few years back, predicting brands would begin dramatically shifting to digital spend versus traditional media, and we began amassing the people and technology needed to pioneer a new method of digital marketing via the cloud. We’ve been making terrific progress on this.

During our last Financial Analyst meeting, I shared our vision for Adobe Marketing Cloud based on major disruptions happening in cloud, mobile and social computing that are continuing to transform Adobe’s Digital Media and Digital Marketing businesses.

In March, I demonstrated a working example of our vision at our Digital Marketing Summit, which really brought to life the way our Digital Media and Digital Marketing worlds can connect. You can see how marketers can analyze campaign data and socialize conversations in real time to update creative assets—all through Adobe Marketing Cloud.

We’ve now invested more than $2 billion in bringing the systems and people together to accomplish this, including acquisitions of Omniture, Day Software, Efficient Frontier, and Auditude. This is an incredible team, and is just the start of our paving the way to today’s true Marketing Cloud.

Adobe Marketing Cloud offers a complete package of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, and web experience management products that bring marketing minds together in a whole new way. It is a coming together of all our work to date on Digital Marketing, and a true breakthrough part of Adobe’s business that brings marketing and creative teams together online to share campaign data, update creative work, and socialize progress within their own teams to enhance personalization and optimization.

This summer’s Olympics was an early example of these two worlds uniting. Not only was Adobe creative software used to design and build the NBC Olympics apps, which offered for the first time, live mobile viewing of over 3,500 hours of Olympic events to more than 10 million viewers, but NBC Olympics also took advantage of Adobe’s Digital Marketing technology to measure and monetize user traffic and engagement in its apps and then optimize the content and app experience based on results. This combination of creativity and marketing powered by technology is enabling a whole new generation of experiences. No other company is better suited to enable this than Adobe.

It’s very exciting for us to be able to connect these two worlds, and we’re still in the early days of the revolution. Stay tuned for more to come.

Kevin