In the marketing automation space, Adobe has four similar offerings: Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO), Adobe Campaign Classic (ACC), Adobe Campaign Standard (ACS) and Adobe Campaign v8 (AC v8).
If you are wondering why so many options and what the difference between them is, you are not alone.
However, when you understand them, you realize that they make a lot of sense and each one has its own space in the Adobe stack. Sure, there are overlaps, but there are also important differences we need to address to get the full picture.
Jonas Guldberg Pabst, Principal Consultant
I hope this post will help you better navigate these options and help you choose the best offering for you and your company.
If you are looking for the a comparison do not want to read all the details and conclusions, go directly to the comparison by clicking here.
Platform Question
When talking about the Adobe Campaign platforms, there are currently three in the list there is originated from the same system, but with years of development between them.
The AJO platform is the newest automation offering from Adobe, which is built on top of Experience Platform with the ability to combine online and offline data at a granular event level creating a real-time customer profile.
When I am saying there currently are three platforms, the oldest ACC platform is being decommissioned within 2027* and the ACS platform is being decommissioned in 2026*.
This is to make room for the new kid in the stack called Adobe Campaign v8 also referred to as - Adobe Campaign Managed Cloud.
The new AC v8 is a good combination of the two older Adobe Campaign platforms, with an injection of features from AJO.
So we have the strength and speed from ACC, the marketer-friendly web UI from AJO (with added features) and the 360 profile view known from ACS.
AC v8 can be controlled from a web UI, which is created in an extended design from the current Experience Cloud UI, used in Experience Platform and Journey Optimizer, through a powerful user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
You are also able to connect from the console as you have done until now in ACC, where all you do will be automatically reflected in the web UI, including the folder structure which is a totally neat feature.
AC v8 is placed as a standalone product with all the strengths and weaknesses that come with this and it's a more siloed, but powerful database structure.
AJO is a full web solution which is intertwined with AEP and can leverage all the cool functionality that AEP has to offer. Taking advantage of the rtCDP and the streaming segments we can create journeys that can be joined when data from an action is added.
There is a large number of sources that can add data through the edge network, which all will be combined into the profile.
AJO is placed on top of AEP as a service and will share its data directly and will also leverage the power of the more simple rtCDP and the segmentation features.
So, which platform should we invest our money in, when departing from ACC/ACS?
That question is after my belief, the most important question we need to ask ourselves and is something that we need to have an answer on, within the first half of 2024, or we will be left in the dark age when ACC and ACS are gone.
Put the tech on the sideline
To start the conversation on the subject, I will take us a bit back from the tech and look at the platforms from a cleaner perspective, where we can define our business rules before settling on the tech and investing in a platform that does not quite fit all of our future needs or has to much to offer.
So, we need to talk about how we would like to place the marketing automation platform in the solution architecture, and if it should be a headless or more controlling factor of the automation in terms of how we collect and use the data.
The headless will be AC v8 would be running primarily on offline data and sending batch-based experiences. Where AJO will be leveraging offline and online data in batch and real-time communication.
In a few non-tech separations you should go with AJO for the real-time trigger experience and pick AC v8 for advanced offline batch communication through planned experiences.
Working with data
We can say that the biggest difference between the two is that AJO is a service on top of the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), where AC 8 can be acquired as a standalone platform, just like ACC or ACS was placed in the Adobe automation stack.
In AJO we are leveraging on the AEP XDM data model which works with having a flat profile model with many fields and few relational schemas, whereas we in AC v8 are working with a postgres relational database where the profiles can be linked to data in a nested model rather than the flat model as we see in AJO.
From a non-tech perspective, this will mean that in AJO, we are publishing the same data on several profiles whereas in AC v8 we are linking the profiles to a schema containing all the data needed e.g. company. In AJO we have faster access to the profile data and the real-time or event updates there will be combined into the 360 customer profile.
Cool features
Both AJO and AC v8 will deliver the coolest features to help you deliver a heck of a customer experience, personalized at many data points for delivering the best customer experience.
Each of the platforms will have a bit different view on how we can deliver that experience, even if they are quite similar when looking at them from a big perspective, there are small but larger differences.
AJO will keep a good focus on having a finger on being able to trigger experiences based on online and offline behaviour, where at the same time they can create custom actions sending event data for internal usage in another system.
All of the above can trigger communication in real-time using both offline and online data arriving in batches or through real-time events.
AC v8 will use its power to have a relational data model, create complex user journeys with advanced workflow elements, leverage powerful built-in web apps, ability to send attachments in emails and export modulated data from the platform.
AC v8 can trigger communication through API or make use of the data placed in the database from various custom sources.
Comparison table
When we have looked a little under the hood on the two platforms, we have made this table with a few simple one-liners about the two platforms.
| Journey Optimizer (AJO) | Campaign v8 (AC v8) |
| Ability to combine online and offline data at a granular event level creating a real-time customer profile | Offline data, limited view of online data to trigger communications |
| Real-time segmentation and activation based on big data architecture | Batch segmentation and activation reliant on traditional SQL database |
| Powerful segmentation capabilities across online and offline data inputs | Strong segmentation capabilities using offline data. If including online behaviour, there is a delay in absorbing online data. |
| High personalisation capabilities – online content into offline (e.g showing the last product viewed but didn't purchase in emails) and vice versa | Personalization is possible with what data is imported into the daily or delta loads. Limited online or real-time behavior-driven personalization is possible |
| High-scale sending capabilities (millions in minutes) | More limited sending capabilities (20 million per hour) |
| Offer decisions across all channels. | Offer decision capabilities limited to email, direct mail and SMS |
| Ability to talk to all customers at once through 1:1 behavior-driven communications | Batch communications and limited web-triggered communications |
If you can see yourself and your organization in one of the below bullets, AJO is not the right choice for you.
- Will only use on-premise data
- No plan to use a Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- Looking for a "lift & shift" of existing campaigns
- Teams and processes are not aligned in achieving the organization's goals at a bigger and no need for an extensive automation setup
Make the decision
It is known, that it can be hard to pick the next platform and have your organization with you in understanding the need for a “new” platform, but this decision must be, as mentioned earlier, made within the first half of 2024.
If you need help making the decision and have the advantage of seeing the platforms in action, you can contact Accrease to get you started.
What about the development
If you are interested in the history of the Campaign platform, and how it developed from ACC into AC v8 and AJO, I will roll out a few details about it here below.
The original product was called Neolane and was owned by a French company called Neolane Inc. until it was purchased by Adobe in 2013 for $600 million.
The Neolane product was released in 2001 and has from 2001 till 2013 gone through 4 major releases with new revolutionary features for a cross-channel platform of that era.
It was first released by Adobe as Campaign Classic in 2013, and the original product has kept that name up until today where its in final years as version 7.
During the years, Adobe released its “little brother” in 2017, called Campaign Standard which was released as a cloud version of Campaign Classic there was more marketer-friendly than the big brother ACC was.
Campaign Standard did gain a lot of market reputation and many customers made the jump from Campaign Classic to Campaign Standard due to the lightweight possibilities that marketers saw in the new platform.
With Campaign Standard came a new email editor, the introduction of Fragments and a simple but advanced editor fully based on drag-and-drop functionalities.
Later in 2019 AEP was announced and unveiled at Summit to everyone's excitement, a full-blooded CDP, created from Adobe's own hands (and not bought as earlier products).
With the release of AEP, we also got Journey Orchestration, which was a marketing tool that could leverage the power from AEP and trigger communication through various automation tools eg. ACC and ACS.
In 2021 AJO was announced to the public and will be a tool placed on top of AEP which could leverage the AEP CDP power and put it into automation with its built-in actions for email, SMS and push.
In the same year as AJO was announced Adobe also unveiled that they will continue the ACC lane and build a new version of the ACC platform that will be better implemented in the Experience Cloud and have the power of Snowflake from their new partnership with Microsoft.
In 2024 the new web user interface was released, which was a revolution since marketers now easily can create experiences in an advanced automation tool like ACC without the technical console and old-looking platform.
* Dates are as currently mentioned by Adobe, but they can change in the years to come.
