It was great to be back in person at Adobe Summit this year! We saw many familiar faces we hadn’t seen in person in too long and many new folks we were excited to meet.
This post continues our tradition of recapping the top ten data and insights-related things from Adobe Summit that caught our attention.
10: #ProjectSidebySide
Project Side-by-Side was a #Sneak of a conceptual live-session collaboration feature where two users can interact with the same Customer Journey Analytics workspace simultaneously and see each other’s changes in real-time. This could be a valuable feature for many collaborators in today’s remote and distributed environment.
9: Evangelist Gone Wild
Not product related, but we want to give a quick shout-out to Eric Matisoff for hanging strong with professional comedian and #SummitSneaks co-host Tig Notaro. It’s always good to see our data and analytics peeps representing well on the main stage. We’re fully expecting to see him next on a Bravo aftershow with Andy Cohen in the near future.
8: Marketo Advanced AI Modeling & Dynamic Chat
Marketo received enhancements, including a more advanced AI modeling feature (that incorporates algorithmic attribution). This feature does three things: 1.) It reduces the need for assumptions and rule-setting; 2.) It better isolates the performance of tracked marketing and sales tactics by removing baseline effects on revenue; and 3.) It adds the ability to create separate-trained AI models for different conversion points or segments.
Additionally, Marketo introduces Dynamic Chat, which can be used on a landing page or your main website to facilitate dialogues with visitors to provide additional information, coordinate a meeting, or route to the appropriate next channel for more information.
7: Summit Sneaks Beachside Fry Guy
If the magnificence of Eric Matisoff and Tig Notaro wasn’t enough, a new celebrity emerged at this year’s Adobe Summit: The beach fry guy. During the fascinating showcase of #ProjectLimitlessOptions, we met a new folk hero of beach snacks—the Tig’s Tasty Treats Beachside Fry Guy (T3BFG). We’re not sure why we like this guy so much–only our subconsciousness may know–but we do now have a strange craving for AI with a side of Tig’s fries.
6: Red Hat and Real-Time CDP
Chris Sessoms from Red Hat led a session (session replay), walking through their journey as they considered adopting RT-CDP, the lessons learned along the way, and the business impact they’ve observed with it in place.
Notable benefits have been that they can more effectively optimize the spend of their digital media budgets by decreasing the cost of leads and increasing the click-through and conversion rates of both onsite and offsite personalization plays across global and regions. Thanks to those at Summit who joined our after-party with Red Hat at the Rock House to delve deeper into their success with Experience Platform and RT-CDP.
5: #ProjectPathWise
Another gem from the #SummitSneaks, Project Path Wise is an AI-based simulation feature within Adobe Journey Optimization (AJO) to predict journey path value and goal outcomes for various journey designs. This is similar to the predictions we see in ad management tools, but across broader customer touchpoints. We’re curious how they’re modeling the different interactions and how far outside the Adobe-managed channels it can simulate, but we see this being another valuable feature. The potential here is to pre-optimize journey pathing during the design of the customer journey planning and before launching in the wild, saving time from waiting for initial live data.
Separate from the #PathWise sneak preview, Adobe also introduced AI-driven enhanced decisioning features.
4: Macklemore + Rev Run
This was the back-to-back duo we didn’t know we needed, and it’s doubtful we’re worthy enough to be in the presence of ever again. Walk This Way, and you’ll find us down at the Thrift Shop trying to relive the event.
3: Adobe Mix Modeler
Mix Modeler is the evolution of Adobe’s multitouch attribution (MTA) and marketing mix modeling (MMM) solutions, previously called AI-Driven Marketing Measurement. Search Discovery was one of two launch implementation partners helping to bring AI-Driven Marketing Measurement to market last year.
Mix Modeler will next unify the two solutions into a single solution within the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and enable transfer learning across these two functions. Essentially, MTA will be looking backward, and MMM will be looking forward. Combine this with the cross-channel analysis capabilities of Customer Journey Analytics (CJA), and you’ve got an MTA/MMM solution that’s even more productive in driving audience and insight performance.
2: In-Person > Virtual
In-person conferences are not for everyone. For those who were able to attend, this Summit felt like a reunion—almost a return-to-normal, even though so much has changed in the three years since the last Summit. Over the past several years, collaboration has been transactional. But nothing beats the collective energy of over 10,000 people who share the same interest.
1: Adobe Product Analytics
To us, the star of the week was Adobe’s long-anticipated announcement of Product Analytics as an add-on to Customer Journey Analytics, even if it was just for Jen Lasser’s car metaphors.
We think this is huge and fills a key gap in Adobe’s end-to-end customer and marketing analytics capabilities. Be on the lookout for our upcoming deeper dive into Adobe Product Analytics.
And there you have it. We laughed. We cried. We lost money playing blackjack. It was Vegas, baby.
