AI is transforming enterprise marketing – that’s good news for Adobe, which reported record quarterly revenues of $5.9 billion this week, said executives, who played down the risk of “advertising platforms like Google or Meta putting diffusion engines in their ad platforms directly.”
The software behemoth has been talking up its ability to help brands self-serve creative content faster and at global scale through new AI-augmented tools; over the summer it also launched its “LLM optimizer” to help firms benchmark visibility across generative platforms.
“A massive opportunity”
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen flagged on a Q3 call late Thursday (September 11) that “the explosion of content creation and automation in the enterprise and the beginning of new marketing needs, such as LLM optimization, and LLM advertising are a massive opportunity for Adobe.”
He talked down the risk of ad platforms baking in similar native capabilities in response to a question from Morgan Stanley’s Keith Weiss.
Narayen said buyers want to be multi-platform and that “I wouldn't underestimate the amount of magic that we have to make it look as seamless as it has… All those advertising channels… are really excited about Adobe making it seamless which is why you've seen [us] support third-party channels, whether that's TikTok, Meta, Google, Amazon.”
“Adoption… in the enterprise just continues to be really exciting for us.”
GEO is a big focus
Adobe is targeting CMOs directly with AI suites designed in part to serve those looking to improve generative AI optimisation or so-called “GEO”.
As Adobe’s President of Digital Experience Anil Chakravarthy put it: [From] discovery to actual consideration, to purchase, maybe even the post purchase, that entire funnel is starting to consolidate and you're going to be seeing consumers actually adopt LLMs for the entire process.”
“AI influenced ARR has now surpassed $5 billion” the company added, raising its predicted full-year revenue range to $23.65-$23.70 billion.
(Looking more closely, ARR from its “new AI-first products including Firefly, Acrobat AI Assistant and GenStudio for performance marketing” was more modest; passing its year-end target of $250 million early.)
Adobe is starting to ship “automated content production capabilities through Firefly Services to enterprises of all sizes and across all verticals” as head of digital media, David Wadhwani put it. “Generative AI consumption accelerated with 29 billion generations and video generations growing nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter,” he said on the call.
“Key enterprise wins include Disney, FedEx, Home Depot, Meta, MetLife, Stagwell, Ulta and Volkswagen.”
Creative media is one area where generative AI really does excel – hallucinations are largely harmless in this kind of deployment – and Adobe has been baking a growing range of LLMs into its application suite to support those looking for quick visual, audio, video creative wins.
Adobe is augmenting its Firefly model with Google Gemini Flash 2.5, alongside “Google's Veo and Imagen models roster of partner models from OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, Runway, Pika, Ideogram and others,” said CEO Narayen; “each generative AI model has its own aesthetic style..”
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