Adobe Experience Platform Archives

April 29, 2026

Adobe Summit 2026: What CMOs Actually Need to Know

*By Kasper Andersen, Partner at Accrease*

If you work in digital marketing, you've sat through about three years of vendor decks that all said the same thing: "We've added AI." Some of it was useful. Most of it was a sidebar. A copilot here, a generator there, a "smart" toggle in a settings panel nobody opened twice.

Adobe Summit 2026 was different, and I don't say that lightly.

This wasn't another release where AI got bolted onto an existing product. Adobe rebuilt the operating model. Agents aren't a feature inside Experience Cloud anymore - they are the workflow. The product names changed, the category structure changed, and the demos on stage were no longer about "look what AI can help you do" but "look what AI is doing while you sign off on it."

I know most CMOs are tired of agentic hype. Fair. But this one is worth your attention, because Adobe is one of the few vendors with enough of the customer data, content supply chain, and execution layer in one place to actually pull it off. Here's what happened and, more importantly, what I think it means for you.

From Experience Cloud to CX Enterprise - what the rebrand actually signals

Adobe Experience Cloud is now CX Enterprise. I rolled my eyes at first too. Renames are usually a tell that nothing real has shifted underneath.

This one is different.

The rename is signalling a bet: that the category is no longer "marketing technology" but customer experience as an enterprise discipline — owned across marketing, service, commerce, and IT. It's also Adobe drawing a line in the sand against the Salesforces and HubSpots of the world, who are coming at the same problem from CRM.

To ground the scale: Adobe says the underlying Experience Platform now powers more than 1 trillion experiences a year, and AEP ARR grew over 30%. That's not a roadmap company. That's a vendor with real production volume making a real platform bet.

The rebrand isn't the story. The reorganisation underneath it is.

The new shape of Adobe's analytics portfolio: meet CX Analytics

The cleanest example of the reorganisation is on the analytics side. Adobe collapsed its analytics products into a new umbrella called CX Analytics. Inside it sits:

- Data Insights Agent - agentic analytics that surfaces insights, explains trends, and recommends next actions

- Proactive Insights - anomaly alerts before you think to ask

- Root cause analysis

- LLM conversation insights - analytics for AI-driven chat experiences (this is new and quietly important)

- Traffic measurements

- Marketing Campaign Analytics (MCA) - significant upgrades, more on this below

- Content Analytics - now with omnichannel insights

Why does this matter? Because the structure is the message. Adobe is signalling that analytics, AI, and action are now one product surface - not three teams shipping three roadmaps that meet in a Slack channel. If you've ever had to manually hand off "the data team found something" to "the campaign team will do something about it," you know exactly the friction this is trying to remove.

Marketing Campaign Analytics (MCA) and the move to causal AI

Now the deeper one.

If the name is new to you, MCA is what Adobe used to call Mix Modeler - now broadened, renamed, and pulled into the CX Analytics umbrella. Same DNA, bigger ambition. We've been hands-on with Mix Modeler since the early days, among a handful of teams in EMEA who have run a full implementation, so this is one of the announcements I have a particular interest in watching play out in production rather than in a keynote.

What's actually new is the causal AI layer. In plain language: instead of attribution based on correlation and a finance team's gut feel, MCA is trying to tell you what actually drove the outcome.

Last-touch attribution has been broken for years. Multi-touch attribution is better, but anyone who has tried to defend a model in front of a CFO knows it's still a polite fiction - every vendor's model conveniently flatters the channels they sell. Causal inference is a different mental model. It asks: if this campaign hadn't run, what would have happened? That's the question your CFO is actually asking. It's also the question marketers have been bad at answering for two decades.

Adobe is positioning MCA at three audiences: Marketing Ops (cleaner decisions), Revenue Ops (budget credibility with finance), and AdTech teams (defensible spend allocation). All three need the same thing: a number they can put in a board deck without asterisks.

I'll be honest. The proof will be in the implementation, not the keynote. Causal inference at the scale Adobe is promising is genuinely hard, and "we have a causal model" has been said before by vendors who shipped a slightly fancier regression. I want to see the methodology, the assumptions, and the customer results. But it's the most interesting analytics announcement of the show.

Brand Concierge: from chatbot to commerce surface

Brand Concierge was a chatbot at last year's Summit. This year it isn't.

It's now a conversational layer that connects product discovery, search, support, and loyalty - and crucially, it now reaches into commerce. Real-time product details, checkout, the whole motion can happen inside a conversation. Adobe announced ecosystem partnerships with [24]7.ai, Algolia, and Netomi, which is what makes this credible: those are the names that handle conversational CX at scale today.

The mental model shift: Brand Concierge isn't a feature on your storefront. It's a surface your customers will increasingly start their journey on, and Adobe wants to own that surface end-to-end with governed agentic AI underneath.

If you sell anything online and you're still thinking of "chat" as a cost-to-serve support tool, this is your nudge to revisit that assumption.

Agent Orchestrator: the plumbing CMOs should actually care about

Most CMOs will skim past this announcement. Don't.

The Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator is the most strategically important thing Adobe shipped at Summit 2026, and it's also the least sexy. It's the coordination layer, not a single AI model, but the modular architecture that routes tasks to specialized agents, manages shared memory across them, and connects Adobe with third-party systems through Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints.

Translation: this is what lets agents from Microsoft, Google Cloud, OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, IBM, and NVIDIA actually work together with Adobe agents on a shared task, with shared context, against your data - instead of stepping on each other.

None of this works without a clean data foundation underneath. If your AEP collection layer is still on legacy libraries, you're going to feel that pain quickly - the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK is the prerequisite most teams underestimate going into agentic projects.

The orchestrator is the technical answer to the easy half of the question. The operating model question - who owns the agents, who governs their actions, how human approval flows - is yours to answer inside your organisation. Nobody is going to ship that for you.

If you take one thing away from Summit, take this: the orchestrator is the reason the rest of the stack composes into something useful instead of a pile of features.

MCP servers for Adobe Analytics, CJA, and Journey Optimizer

This one didn't make most CMO recap posts. It should have made yours.

Adobe announced Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for Adobe Analytics, Customer Journey Analytics, and Adobe Journey Optimizer. In plain English: any LLM-based agent - Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or an internal one your team builds - can now talk directly to your Adobe data and trigger actions in Journey Optimizer, with Adobe handling the governance and authentication layer.

That's a quietly massive shift. Today, "asking your data a question" still mostly means opening a Workspace dashboard, exporting to Excel, or DM'ing your analyst on Slack. With MCP servers, that motion collapses into a conversation an agent can run on your behalf - pulling from CJA, validating against Adobe Analytics, then proposing or executing a change in Journey Optimizer.

It's also a hedge by Adobe. They're not pretending you'll only use their agents. By exposing AA, CJA, and AJO as MCP endpoints, Adobe is making sure that whichever agent your organization standardizes on - and there will be a standard - Adobe data and execution stay a first-class citizen rather than a screenshot somebody pasted into a prompt.

For a CMO, the takeaway is short: the question your data team will be asking in the next twelve months is no longer "which BI tool?" but "which agent has access to which surface, and what is it allowed to do?" MCP servers are the answer Adobe is shipping for that question.

CX Enterprise Coworker: the demo that got the room

The headline-grabber was the CX Enterprise Coworker. Goal-driven autonomous agent. The demo: tell it "increase cross-sell performance by 3%." It builds a plan, waits for your sign-off, runs the campaign, and tracks results against the original goal. It pulls from Real-Time CDP, Customer Journey Analytics, and Journey Optimizer to do it.

The room reacted the way Adobe wanted it to.

I'll temper expectations: it's GA "in coming months," which is vendor for "Q3-ish if you're lucky." It's a direction, not a finished product. And "increase cross-sell by 3%" is a clean demo goal - the messy goals real marketers carry don't fit on a slide that nicely. But the direction is right, and the fact that it loops back on the original goal instead of just executing tasks is the part that matters. That's the difference between an agent and a script.

What Adobe Summit 2026 means for CMOs

Here's my honest take. Adobe didn't reinvent marketing at Summit 2026. What they did was make a credible argument that the operating model of marketing is changing, and they're shipping the platform pieces to support that change. That's a more interesting claim than another AI feature reveal, and it's also a more demanding one - because the work of adopting it is yours, not theirs.

If you're a CMO at an Adobe shop, here's what I'd put on your next 90 days:

Map your current attribution model honestly. If you can't defend it to your CFO without flinching, MCA's causal direction is worth a serious pilot conversation.
Pick one workflow to make agent-native. Not the whole stack. One. Campaign QA, audience refinement, content variants - something where a human-in-the-loop agent can earn its keep and you can measure it.
Decide who owns "agent governance" before you need to. It's not IT's job alone, and it's not marketing's alone. Get ahead of it now while the stakes are low.
Revisit your conversational surface strategy. Brand Concierge plus the [24]7/Algolia/Netomi ecosystem changes the calculus on what "chat" is for.
Don't rebrand internally just because Adobe did. "CX Enterprise" is their positioning. Your version of customer experience as an enterprise discipline needs to come from your own org, not a vendor deck.

That's it. No big finale.

If any of this resonates and you want to spar on what it means for your specific stack - especially the orchestration and operating-model side, which is where most of the real work hides - happy to have that conversation. We at Accrease have been thinking hard about this exact transition with our customers, and I'd love to hear what you're seeing on your side. Contact us here 😉

Published by Kasper Andersen in Articles, Insights

Tags: Adobe CX Enterprise, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Summit 2026, Agent Orchestration, Agentic AI, Brand Concierge, CMO Strategy, Customer Experience, CX Analytics, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Campaign Analytics, Marketing Technology, MCP

April 7, 2026

Adobe Summit ’26: Our Experts Share Their Must-Watch Sessions

Adobe Summit 2026 is right around the corner, and as always, we've been doing the homework so you don't have to.

This year's agenda is packed. And with so many sessions competing for your attention, knowing where to focus can make all the difference. AI, loyalty, B2B strategy, next-gen search... the themes shaping the industry right now are all over the programme, and the challenge isn't finding relevant content, it's narrowing it down.

So we asked our experts to share the sessions they're most excited about. Here's what's on their radar ahead of Summit:

Sune Christensen

Sune is one of our AJO and AEP specialists, always keeping an eye on where customer experience is heading next.

Session:
Beyond Earn & Burn: The Future of Loyalty Orchestration [CP21]

Reason:

This is the one I'm most excited about. Customer expectations around hyper-personalization have never been higher, and loyalty is harder to earn than ever, but also more important. What really draws me to this session is how it tackles the practical side of that: how AJO and AEP are actually helping businesses stay ahead. If you're thinking about where loyalty strategy is heading, don't miss this one.

Balram Khunti

Balram is our Senior Consultant and expert in Adobe Advertising Cloud. Always keeping a close eye on what actually moves the needle, the intersection of data, AI, and performance measurement.

Session:
Measuring What Matters: Connecting Content to Conversion [L123]

Reason:
This one stood out to me straight away. Understanding the full customer journey is becoming more critical across the industry. It's just not about clicks anymore, but about how different touchpoints contribute to real business outcomes. That's exactly what this session digs into.

Session:
Clicks to Visibility: How General Motors Builds Brand Presence in AI Search [S331]

Reason:
AI is changing how people search and discover brands, and I think it's really important to understand how companies are adapting to that shift. Seeing a company like General Motors tackle it head-on makes this one a must for me

Chiara Coletta

Chiara recently joined the Accrease team and is diving headfirst into the Adobe ecosystem, bringing a fresh perspective and plenty of curiosity.

Session:
How Adobe AI Drives Speed to Insight [S109]

Reason:
I'm new to CJA, and want to attend all the sessions on it's usage and tricks. But, this is the session I'm most excited about. I genuinely believe that mastering AI skills is going to be essential going forward and this session feels like exactly the right place to start

Samuel Rajkumar

Marketo specialist, unlike any other. Experienced in building digital strategies using technologies like CDP and combining them with Marketing Automation.

Sessions:
Adobe on Adobe: The Future of B2B Marketing [S231]

Reason:
B2B marketing is evolving so fast right now, and this is the session I'm most curious about. I really want to understand how Adobe is framing where it's all heading. It feels like a session that will shape how I think about the next couple of years

Sessions:
Agentic Web: Design, Automate, Convert with Webflow and Marketo [OS759]

Reason:
Improving lead quality and attribution directly from the website is something almost every company I work with is wrestling with. This session goes right to the heart of that, which is why it's high on my list.

Sessions:
Why CDW Chose Adobe Marketo Engage as the Foundation of Its AI Vision [OS215]

Reason:
I always love a real-world example at scale, and this one looks like a great one. Seeing how CDW is using Marketo as the backbone for AI-driven marketing shows exactly where marketing operations is heading, more connected, more AI-driven, and focused on revenue impact. That's the direction everything is moving, and I can't wait to see how they've done it

Kasper Andersen

Former Manager at Adobe for Proof of Concepts in EMEA & JAPAC. He has been working with Adobe Analytics since it was known as SiteCatalyst; however, his favourite solution is still and always will be Adobe Target.

I'll be honest - I evaluated every session on the agenda the same way I evaluate a new sneaker drop: what am I walking away with? So here are my must-attend sessions for Summit '26, and yes, the swag was a deciding factor.

Session:
2026 Adobe Analytics Rockstars — Top Tips and Tricks [S101]

Reason:
Look, I would have gone to this one anyway. But the fact that they're handing out a legendary tee and a collectible pin just confirms what I already knew: this is the most important session at Summit. The Analytics community puts on a show every year, and this year is no different. If you only go to one session, make it this one - and get there early.

Session:
Insights Beyond the Stars: Galactic Customer Journey Analytics Tips & Tricks [S103]

Reason:
A 70s space-inspired tee? That's not swag, that's a lifestyle. This session had me at the aesthetic alone, but honestly, a session bold enough to commit to that kind of theme is probably bold enough to deliver something worth hearing. Plus, the pin rounds out the fit nicely.

Session:
The Unified Intelligence Engine: A Single Insights Platform for the NFL [S110]

Reason:
Adobe and NFL. Foam football. Collectable pin. I don't know what else you need me to say. This is the crossover nobody asked for, but everybody needed, and I will be at the front of that swag queue.

Summit week will be here before you know it. We'll be watching closely, and once the dust settles, we'll be back with a full roundup of the biggest takeaways and what they mean for your business. Stay tuned.

Published by Vide Blomdahl in Insights

Tags: Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Marketo Engage, AEP, AI, B2B Marketing, dobe, Loyalty, Summit

March 26, 2025

Adobe Summit 2025: Unleashing the Full Power of AI for Customer Experiences

It’s been a week since Adobe Summit 2025 concluded in Las Vegas, and after digesting the wealth of announcements and insights shared, it's clear we're entering an exciting new era, one driven by intelligent automation and seamless collaboration.

As expected, Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) once again took center stage, but the depth of innovation this year was remarkable. Adobe has accelerated the transition from assisting marketers to orchestrating entire workflows through AI, bringing practical applications front and center.

Let’s dive into the most impactful announcements and explore what they mean for your business.

Agentic AI: Meet Your New Virtual Team

One of the most exciting announcements was the introduction to Adobe’s Agent Orchestrator in AEP, complete with 10 specialized AI agents. Imagine automating your content production, web optimization, audience segmentation, and journey management, all with AI "team members" managed from a single interface. These pre-built, compliance-ready agents simplify tasks previously requiring significant manual effort or technical expertise, allowing marketers to focus on strategic initiatives.

Adobe Brand Concierge: Conversational AI Made Personal

Another groundbreaking innovation is Adobe Brand Concierge, a powerful conversational AI that creates immersive, personalized customer interactions. Built directly into AEP, this tool not only engages customers but coordinates seamlessly with your existing customer data and content. From answering product questions to scheduling follow-up actions, Brand Concierge is poised to redefine how businesses engage across digital channels.

Experimentation Accelerator: Optimizing Journeys with AI Precision

Adobe Journey Optimizer received a major upgrade with the new Experimentation Accelerator. This AI-driven feature takes the guesswork out of optimization by recommending the next best actions based on real-time, cross-channel data analysis. Businesses can now systematically test and improve customer journeys, significantly boosting marketing efficiency and ROI.

Enhanced Content Supply Chain: Faster, Smarter, Better

The announcements around Adobe GenStudio and Firefly expansions are equally transformative. GenStudio Foundation streamlines content creation and delivery into a single cohesive workflow, while Firefly now supports advanced generative AI capabilities for video and 3D content. These advancements enable marketers to quickly create and localize content at scale, dramatically shortening production cycles and amplifying content effectiveness across all markets and channels.

Strategic Partnership: Adobe Meets Amazon & AWS

One strategic partnership stood out. Adobe’s deeper integration with AWS and Amazon Ads. This collaboration unlocks powerful first-party data matching and targeting capabilities, streamlines ad creative workflows directly within Adobe Creative Cloud, and simplifies the deployment of Adobe Experience Cloud applications within AWS environments. It’s a strategic leap towards better performance, compliance, and seamless cross-platform experiences.

Adapting to the AI-driven Era

Beyond technology, the Summit emphasized the significant shift businesses must embrace to fully leverage these innovations. As AI continues to redefine workflows and customer expectations rise, marketers and IT teams must collaborate more closely. Adobe stressed the importance of clear executive ownership, cross-functional agility, and ongoing experimentation to navigate this rapidly evolving landscape successfully.

Key Takeaways for Businesses

Leverage AI agents to scale personalization effortlessly
Embrace conversational AI for richer customer engagement
Adopt systematic, AI-driven experimentation to optimize customer journeys
Streamline content workflows with advanced generative AI solutions
Utilize strategic partnerships to enhance data-driven advertising and deployment flexibility

Final Thoughts

Adobe Summit 2025 was a testament to Adobe’s bold vision of integrated, AI-driven customer experiences. The advanced tools announced promise exciting opportunities for marketers and businesses ready to embrace these innovations. However, success hinges not just on adopting new technologies, but on fostering a culture of agility, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

To explore these innovations and their implications further, we recommend joining upcoming Adobe events or scheduling a session with our specialists at Accrease. The future of customer experience is here, so let’s navigate it together. Contact us here 😉

Kasper Andersen, Partner

Published by Kasper Andersen in Insights

Tags: Accrease, Adobe, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Summit 2025, AEP, Customer Experience, Marketing Automation, Partnership

February 19, 2025

Top Picks for the Adobe Summit ’25 from Our Experts

Adobe Summit 2025 is almost here, and we're sorting through all the sessions and announcements to keep our clients ahead of the curve.

With 306 in-person sessions and 28 online, there's a ton to choose from. And if you can't make it in person, no worries. The sessions should be recorded, just like in past years.

Not sure where to start? Whether you're looking to sharpen your Adobe Analytics skills, explore AI-powered personalization, or fine-tune your omnichannel engagement, this year's lineup has something for everyone.

To help you make the most of your time, we asked our experts to share the sessions they're most excited about. Here are their top picks:

Emma Walderlo

Emma is our data-driven Paid Search expert who is always turning insights into high-performing campaigns. With experience from Avanza Bank, she’s all about smart strategies and sharp analysis.

Session:
Adobe Analytics: Using Advanced Metrics to Level Up Your Reporting [OS115]

Reason:
I’m looking forward to attending the session on calculated metrics in Adobe Analytics. This session feels especially relevant to me as it gives me the opportunity to learn more about how to create more precise metrics and gain a deeper understanding of how I can flexibly generate tailored insights, conduct more accurate analyses, and extract better insights from data.

No matter how much experience you have with Adobe Analytics, there’s always something new to learn and smarter ways to work. I believe that this session will provide me with the right tools to do just that. If you, like me, want to optimize your analyses and take your work in Adobe Analytics to the next level, I highly recommend checking out this session.

Jonas Nielsen

Former Consulting Manager at Adobe and Founder of Accrease. Jonas is a Swiss army knife for the Adobe stack, particularly AEP, and often finds himself by a whiteboard drawing the client's architecture around AEP.

Session:
2025 Adobe Analytics Rockstars: Top Tips and Tricks [S101]

Reason:
This is the session I always attend at every Summit I have attended, and that is quite a few. It is a super fun format, and I love the passion.

Session:
Adobe Journey Optimizer Roadmap and Innovations [S520]

Reason:
AJO is one of the solutions we see generating a lot of value for our customers. It allows us to use all of the data we have available in AEP to communicate something relevant to the customer, no matter the channel and wherein the customer's journey the person is. So, learning more about the roadmap and innovations will be super interesting.

Session:
Building Personalized Connections at Scale: T-Mobile’s Adobe Journey [S733]

Reason:
Because Accrease is already working with many leading telcos worldwide, I would love to learn more about how T-Mobile delivers personalized customer experiences using Adobe technology.

Session:
Nordea Bank’s Journey to Power Customer Engagement [OS533]

Reason:
To succeed with Adobe solutions, you need to invest in building the right teams to work with the solutions. Nordea has always impressed me with building good teams to support Adobe technology, and I always love to see one of our customers present at Adobe Summit.

Martine Jørgensen

Martine is our Adobe Analytics and CJA expert, as well as a Danish champion in bench press! Data or dumbbells, she lifts it all.

Session:
2025 Adobe Analytics Rockstars: Top Tips and Tricks [S101]

Reason:
A must-watch for any Adobe Analytics user looking to master the latest tips and tricks from industry experts. Learn insider techniques to optimize your analysis, uncover deeper insights, and make the most of your data.

Session:
The Customer Journey Analytics Tips and Tricks Arcade [S103]

Reason:
From this, you will get many practical tips and unlock advanced analysis techniques for those looking to level up their CJA skills.

Session:
Accelerate Your Revenue Marketing and Sales Cycle with Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition [S108]

Reason:
This can be very insightful for Analysts and B2B marketers. This webinar dives into how Customer Journey Analytics can drive revenue, optimize sales funnels, and improve lead conversion. A must for anyone looking to connect marketing efforts with business growth.

Session:
Adobe Analytics: Using Advanced Metrics to Level Up Your Reporting [OS115]

Reason:
This one goes through AA reporting and shows how advanced metrics can transform Adobe Analytics dashboards. I would say this is ideal for analysts who want to elevate their storytelling and level of insight with data and drive smarter decision-making.

Martin Björklund

Martin is an expert in digital analytics—mastering tracking, measurement, and setting up Analytics. And yes, he’s a big fan of Excel, believing it’s one of the most fantastic tools out there!

Session:
The Customer Journey Analytics Tips and Tricks Arcade [S103] & 2025 Adobe Analytics Rockstars: Top Tips and Tricks [S101]

Reason:
I typically like the hands-on sessions, and customer journey analytics is the future of analytics tools, so from that perspective, the class is very promising. One of the most difficult things is to show relevant insights so that everyone understands how brilliant they are. This session will give you some tools to master later the ability to tell a clear and good story about your most valuable insights!

Samuel Rajkumar

Marketo specialist unlike any other. Experienced in building digital strategies using technologies like CDP and combining them with Marketing Automation.

Sessions:
Hands-On: Troubleshooting Adobe Marketo Engage Like a Pro [L221 ]

Reason:
Performance optimization is a recurring challenge in Marketo, and this session offers hands-on insights directly from Adobe field engineers. From Smart List inefficiencies to campaign processing time, it covers the core elements that can impact system performance.

I find this session particularly valuable because performance bottlenecks often go unnoticed until they impact deliverability, scalability, and reporting. Learning how to proactively optimize Marketo setup, identify inefficiencies, and mitigate bot-related data pollution is critical for maintaining a clean and efficient instance.

Sessions:
Hands-On: Crafting Interactive Webinars with Gen AI in Marketo Engage [L223]

Reason:
Webinars continue to be a core part of marketing strategies, but leveraging Gen AI for enhanced engagement and personalization takes it to the next level. This session dives into end-to-end webinar creation in Marketo, including promotion, delivery, and post-event follow-ups.

I find this particularly relevant because recorded webinars often lose engagement over time, and using AI-powered tools to personalize on-demand experiences and repurpose content dynamically makes a huge difference. Learning how to integrate webinar insights into Marketo for improved lead quality and nurturing aligns well with how B2B marketers can maximize ROI.

Mette Riis Bach

Whether it’s navigating the post-cookie world or optimizing customer journeys, Mette knows how to connect the dots and make things happen.

Sessions:
Driving Impact with Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration [L516]

Reason:
I find it interesting to hear more about how companies and agencies can work together in a post-third-party cookie world. Both in terms of ensuring privacy focus and at the same time being able to fully leverage all the benefits of having an RTCDP. Personally, I find this session interesting because it provides insights into how companies can work seamlessly with external partners to enhance advertising and co-marketing efforts across channels like Connected TV, commerce media, and walled gardens. Something I know for sure can be an obstacle for many companies.

Sessions:
Adobe Journey Optimizer Roadmap and Innovations [S520]

Reason:
Today, it is inevitable to talk about personalized, omnichannel engagement strategies without mentioning Adobe Journey Optimizer, which fully allows us to put the customer at the centre of the experience. My second recommendation is this roadmap session, which I believe would help anyone better understand the direction of the product and allow us to be on top of new features.

Kasper Andersen

Session:
AI-Powered Personalization: Prudential's Secret to a 135% Engagement Boost [S530] & Moving Beyond Buzzwords to Proving ROI with Adobe Mix Modeler [S413]

Reason:
Obviously there's a lot of focus on AEP solutions and this is of course the direction Adobe would like everyone to move in. However, a lot of customers are still using Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics, so I was excited to see that the solutions listed for the Prudential case were the good old AA and AT.

Combine that with AI personalization and a lift of a whooping 135% and you got yourself a perfect Summit session...if you ask me.

Which session is my runner-up, you ask? Okay, nobody asked, but I'm telling you anyway. As mentioned the solutions within AEP is getting a lot of focus and at Accrease we have a lot of clients migrating from AA to CJA. So keeping it within that space, then Mix Modeler is a really interesting solution and there's been some incredible cases with huge ROI.

Alright, that's our take for now. Check back after Summit, and we'll summarise the biggest and most important takeaways.

Published by Vide Blomdahl in Insights

Tags: Adobe, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Awards Accrease, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Marketo Engage, AEP, CJA, Customer Journey Analytics, Marketing Automation, Partnership, Summit

May 15, 2024

Adobe Analytics vs. Customer Journey Analytics

Understand the differences between Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics with our Senior Analytics Consultant Martine Jørgensen

Customer Journey Analytics vs Adobe Analytics
Data analysis is crucial for businesses to make informed decisions, and Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics are two prominent tools that aid in achieving this goal. Although both tools serve the purpose of providing valuable insights, there are key differences between them. In this blog post, we will explore these differences, discuss the benefits of implementing Customer Journey Analytics, examine successful case studies, and dive into the user profiles of both tools.

But first – What is Customer Journey Analytics?
Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) has become a hot topic lately – and understandably. It is a powerful tool for businesses to track, analyze, and optimize customer interactions online and offline. It visualizes the entire journey from awareness to advocacy, helping identify pain points and preferences. By creating detailed customer personas, businesses tailor marketing and products accordingly. Businesses can use these insights to enhance marketing effectiveness, optimize resources, and create a seamless customer experience. It looks a lot like Adobe Analytics in relation to the UI and offers many of the same functionalities – so what’s all the hype about? Although it looks a lot like Adobe Analytics in terms of UI and functionality, there are fundamental differences between the two tools that we will discuss later.

What is Adobe Analytics?
Adobe Analytics is the more widely used web analytics tool that focuses primarily on tracking and analyzing website performance. It provides businesses with valuable insights into website traffic, user engagement, conversion rates, and other website-related metrics. Users can create reports with tables and data visualizations in a workspace to analyze and distribute insights.

Adobe Analytics offers a wide range of features, including real-time tracking, segmentation, data visualization, and reporting. It enables businesses to understand how users are interacting with their websites, identify the most effective marketing channels, and optimize website experiences to drive conversions.

What are the Key Differences Between Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics?
As mentioned above, Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics differ in various aspects. Below are the most essential differences:

The data approach
One fundamental difference is their approach to the breadth of data – meaning the variety of data sources. Customer Journey Analytics focuses on capturing and analyzing the entire customer journey, from the initial touchpoint to conversion and beyond. This comprehensive approach allows businesses to gain insights into the various touchpoints and interactions that lead to a conversion, providing a holistic view of the customer's experience. However, Adobe Analytics mainly concentrates on measuring website traffic and engagement metrics, providing valuable information on user behavior within the digital space.

Connect to any data source on the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) for cross-channel analysis. It is essentially a analysis workspace sitting on top of the AEP whereas Adobe Analytics is an analysis workspace on top of an Adobe Analytics implementation – specifically designed for collecting data within the digital realm. In CJA, instead of report suites in the workspace panels, you will see “data views”. This is your ‘view’ into the data connection that you or other admin users have created containing relevant data sources stitched together. Data views are like virtual report suites. Here you can work with the data, create derived fields, classify values etc.

The Architecture
Thus, the architecture looks different for CJA and Adobe Analytics. CJA leverages the technologies of AEP. Here, data collection can come from various sources such as through Adobe's SDK, other Adobe solutions, third-party tools and more. The data is received in the AEP through streaming or batch files. Then, data is organized into a unified set of schemas and cataloged in the Experience Data Model (XDM) which enables a consistent view of the data. To get data from AEP to CJA, one must create a data connection in CJA. When CJA accesses the data lake in the AEP, it essentially pulls a copy into CJA. Then data from the data connection can be curated into a single data view. So CJA can be seen as an extension of the AEP – an analytics interface builds on the AEP.

An illustration of Customer Journey Analytics architecture

When it comes from Adobe Analytics, data is collected from web or app and is sent directly to an Adobe Analytics server where it is mapped into dimensions and events. This difference is vital to understand as it will also be important from a reporting perspective.

An illustration of Adobe Analytics architecture

Customization
Another key difference is the level of customization. CJA offers a highly configurable platform, allowing businesses to tailor the analysis to their specific needs. This level of customization empowers organizations to create bespoke analytics solutions that align with their unique business objectives and KPIs. For instance, the derived fields feature in CJA. This can be compared to processing rules in Adobe Analytics but offers even more customization. With derived fields, the user can clean up data more easily, classify data and create more complex data manipulations. This can all be applied retroactively to the data which means that it will be applied to all the collected data and not just data collected after applying the logic.

In contrast, Adobe Analytics provides a comprehensive suite of pre-built features and reports, making it easier for users to start analyzing data without extensive customization. This out-of-the-box approach can be beneficial for organizations looking for quick and standardized analytics solutions.

Advanced Segmentation
Additionally, Customer Journey Analytics offers advanced segmentation capabilities, enabling businesses to target specific customer groups based on their behavior and preferences. This granular level of segmentation allows companies to personalize their marketing efforts and create targeted campaigns that resonate with different customer segments. On the other hand, Adobe Analytics, although capable of segmenting data, places more emphasis on general website trends rather than individualized segmentation. This broader focus can be useful for organizations looking to understand overall website performance and trends across different user segments.

Benefits of Implementing Customer Journey Analytics
Implementing Customer Journey Analytics brings several benefits to businesses. Firstly, it enables the organization to utilize the powerful technologies within the AEP. It provides a holistic view of the customer journey, enabling companies to identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas of improvement across online/offline data sources. This knowledge empowers businesses to optimize their marketing campaigns, website experiences, and customer engagement strategies.

Furthermore, Customer Journey Analytics enables businesses to gain insights into highly engaged and potential prospects. By understanding the behavior, interests, and preferences of these prospects, companies can segment them and target them with tailored messaging and offerings. Advanced segments based on these 360-degree views of the user journey can be created and sent to the Adobe Experience Cloud to activate on these segments using other Adobe Products such as Journey Optimizer to leverage the value of the integrated tools. It is also possible to send these segments to other parties such as Google Ads, Meta etc.

Moreover, Customer Journey Analytics can also help businesses in predicting future trends and customer behavior. By analyzing historical data and patterns, companies can anticipate potential shifts in customer preferences and market demands. This proactive approach allows businesses to stay ahead of the competition and adapt their strategies, accordingly, ensuring long-term success.

Additionally, Customer Journey Analytics can be instrumental in improving customer retention and loyalty. By tracking customer interactions across various touchpoints, businesses can identify loyal customers and understand the factors that contribute to their satisfaction. This information can be used to create loyalty programs, personalized offers, and exceptional customer service experiences, fostering long-lasting relationships with customers.

Who Would be the User of Adobe Analytics and CJA?
Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics have distinct user profiles. Adobe Analytics is commonly used by marketing professionals, web analysts, and digital marketers. Its intuitive interface and pre-built features make it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.

Customer Journey Analytics, on the other hand, offers more advanced technical features. The level of customizable may appeal to users who require in-depth customer journey insights and tailored analysis. Nonetheless, given its user interface closely resembling Adobe Analytics, Customer Journey Analytics can offer value even to users who don't necessarily need highly customized reports but prioritize comprehensive insights into the customer journey. It retains familiar drag-and-drop functionalities and right-click options within the Analysis Workspace. Thus, transitioning from Adobe Analytics to Customer Journey Analytics wouldn't present a significant adjustment for users accustomed to working in the Analysis Workspace.

Before deciding which analytics tool to use, consider the following factors:
1. Data approach: Consider the variety of data sources that you need to analyze. If you need to capture and analyze the entire customer journey, Customer Journey Analytics might be the better choice. If you only need to analyze website traffic and engagement metrics, Adobe Analytics might be sufficient.

2. Architecture: Consider the technical requirements and resources needed for each tool. Customer Journey Analytics requires a connection to Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and leverages its technologies, while Adobe Analytics is an analysis workspace built on top of an Adobe Analytics implementation. it's worth noting that while Adobe Analytics is optimized primarily for web and app tracking, it is indeed feasible to transmit data from alternative sources to Adobe Analytics. Yet, this process may not be as streamlined as it is when using CJA.

3. Customization: Consider the level of customization needed for your analysis. If you need more flexibility and control over your data, Customer Journey Analytics might be the better choice. If you only need to analyze website and/or app-related behavior and don't require as many on-the-fly data processing and customization abilities as CJA offers, Adobe Analytics might suffice.

4. User profiles: Consider the profiles of the users who will be working with the tool. Customer Journey Analytics might be more suitable for business analysts, data scientists, or marketing professionals who need a comprehensive view of the entire customer journey. Adobe Analytics might be more suitable for web analysts or digital marketers who simply need to analyze website traffic and engagement metrics.

5. Budget: Consider the cost of each tool and how it fits into your budget. Customer Journey Analytics is a more advanced and comprehensive tool, which comes with a higher price tag when migrating or setting it up. Adobe Analytics is a more affordable option, but may not provide the same level of insight and detail on every customer touchpoint as Customer Journey Analytics. Nonetheless, there are a lot of actionable insights that can be derived from using Adobe Analytics.

By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision on which tool to use for your data analysis needs.

Summary
In conclusion, Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Analytics are both powerful tools in the data analysis realm, but they have key differences. Customer Journey Analytics focuses on the entire customer journey, offers advanced customization and segmentation, and enables businesses to gain insights about highly engaged prospects. Adobe Analytics, on the other hand, primarily concentrates on website performance analysis, provides pre-built features, and targets a wider user based.

By understanding the strengths and characteristics of each tool, you can make informed decisions about which one best aligns with your specific requirements and goals. Whether it's optimizing the customer journey or analyzing website metrics, leveraging the right analytics tool can pave the way to data-driven success.

Are you just starting or looking to optimize your current operations?

We are happy to set up a quick, no-strings-attached chat to talk through potential CJA use cases and help you explore which path might make most sense in your case. Contact us here!

Who are we?

At Accrease, we bring data to life. Most companies track their customer's behavior on the website but don't understand the data they collect. We help ensure to gather relevant data, make sense of the data, and present it back to you in a simplified manner.

Overall, we help you make decisions based on data so that you can improve your business.

Published by Martine Jørgensen in Insights

Tags: Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform, Customer Journey Analytics