Adobe Summit’s big lessons – and what to do with them

From agentic AI to content automation, here’s what marketers need to know from this year’s biggest digital experience event.

Over three days in Las Vegas, Adobe Summit 2025 showcased the future of marketing — and it’s clear that the future is AI-powered, privacy-conscious, and built for speed. With 200+ sessions, keynote appearances from industry heavyweights like Jamie Dimon, and bold announcements from Adobe, the event set the tone for what’s next in customer experience.

The opening day focused heavily on marketing measurement, with multi-mix modeling taking the spotlight. As privacy regulations limit access to user-level data, brands are turning to hybrid models that combine the precision of multi-touch attribution (MTA) with the predictive power of media mix modeling (MMM).

🔍 Fospha, a key sponsor, stood out by offering a unified solution that delivers privacy-first, full-funnel insights — helping brands reallocate spend dynamically and understand ROI without cookies.

Meanwhile, sessions on AI and automation highlighted Adobe’s Smart Plus campaigns (built with TikTok), showcasing how AI is now automating everything from creative testing to cross-platform campaign scaling.

🛍 TikTok x Adobe also introduced seamless commerce integrations, underlining the shift toward high-impact, real-time engagement strategies.

Day 2 brought the big guns. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, joined Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen to talk leadership, resilience, and the economic outlook — a grounded take amidst all the tech optimism.

AI became the central character:

🤖 Adobe’s AI-powered agents were shown helping marketers with audience segmentation, journey optimization, and experimentation in real time.

🏨 Marriott shared how AI-driven incentives increased customer engagement — surfacing the value of micro-personalisation.

🏢 Omnicom demonstrated operational wins, using AI to automate workflows, forecast campaign breakdowns, and train underperforming teams — turning marketing into a smarter, leaner machine.

The final day explored the role of agentic AI — autonomous tools embedded into workflows that optimize performance across customer journeys, content creation, and even audience refinement.

🎨 Adobe’s Firefly updates expanded generative AI into video editing and localization, while the Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator showed how marketers can manage multiple AI agents seamlessly.

🎤 In a standout interview, Comwrap Reply’s Tim Conrad and Luke Barton shared how AI is transforming enterprise marketing: from multilingual asset generation to real-time content adjustments, they detailed how AI is shaving weeks off production cycles and delivering measurable results.

📸 Their Co-Pilot tool now auto-tags and organizes massive libraries of campaign assets — reducing friction between teams and making large-scale, omnichannel activation faster and easier.

✅ AI is the new co-pilot – Marketers no longer have to choose between speed and personalization. AI lets them do both — at scale.
✅ Personalization is non-negotiable – From journey orchestration to dynamic content, brands must tailor experiences or risk irrelevance.
✅ Measurement is still a pain point – But players like Fospha are helping marketers finally connect the dots between strategy and performance in a cookieless world.
✅ AI + Human = Winning Combo – AI is augmenting, not replacing, marketing teams. The opportunity lies in combining automation with human creativity and judgment.

What does great advertising look like in 2025? Insights from SXSW, paired with fresh data from NCSolutions and commentary from industry leaders like L’Oréal’s Join Han Wen and NBCUniversal’s Josh Feldman, suggest it’s about balance—not just performance.

• Creative still reigns supreme, contributing 49% to incremental sales—quality content matters more than ever.

• Brand-building is gaining ground, rising from 15% to 21% in sales impact since 2017. It’s about community, trust, and long-term love.

• Targeting has become smarter, now contributing 11%, while the importance of broad reach has declined.

• Measurement is critical. As Han Wen put it, don’t chase “false precision”—track full-funnel impact to see the big picture.

• Timing still matters. Recency remains a consistent 5% driver—ads need to hit at just the right moment.

The verdict? Long-term brand connection + short-term performance = sustainable impact.

🧠 “A healthy diet in advertising balances both brand-building and performance. Go too far in one direction and you risk losing impact.” — Join Han Wen, L’Oréal

ClickZ had the inside track at Fospha’s SXSW Masterclass series, where industry leaders unpacked the biggest challenges — and opportunities — shaping eCommerce in 2025. Here are the top takeaways:

• The Amazon Measurement Struggle Is Real — But Now Solvable: At the Halo Masterclass, brands shared how they’ve struggled to measure the impact of off-platform ads on Amazon sales — a consistent challenge we’ve heard across the industry. Fospha’s latest research introduced Unified ROAS, a game-changing metric that connects external ad spend with Amazon performance for the very first time.

• There’s More Headroom on TikTok and Snapchat Than You Think: Sessions with TikTok and Snap experts revealed that there’s still huge untapped potential for brands on these platforms. Full-funnel strategies, creative best practices, and better targeting are key — and data-driven approaches are already driving real results.

• It’s Time to Quantify the Power of Brand-Building: Upper-funnel investment can’t be ignored — but it also needs to be justified. Fospha’s data shows how to connect brand investment with business impact, making brand-building a measurable growth driver rather than a leap of faith.

📌 Like what you’re reading? There’s more to come. Fospha continues the Masterclass series at Shoptalk Spring (March 25–27, Las Vegas) with sessions on Amazon measurement, TikTok, Snapchat, Applovin, and measuring brand impact.

Approaching 2025, CMOs and marketing leaders encounter a multifaceted landscape that requires strategic agility and operational prowess. The most accomplished CMOs will bridge the divide between strategic planning and execution. Gartner’s recent research identifies the three strategic imperatives that marketing leaders should focus on in 2025 to foster successful enterprise growth. 

Amidst the pressures of disruption and transformation, CMOs must prioritize the implementation of their strategic plans. However, many face challenges in demonstrating their value to CEOs and CFOs, who may not recognize marketing as a catalyst for growth.

To surmount this, CMOs should capitalize on marketing’s strengths, transforming it into a forward-thinking customer insights engine that guides enterprise strategy and commercialization efforts. 

AI advancements are redefining marketing analytics by integrating custom AI assistants and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to deliver context-aware insights.

These innovations enhance data analysis efficiency and precision, adhering to specific business protocols and leveraging historical data practices, thereby empowering marketers to generate actionable insights and maintain competitive advantage.