Adobe wants to compete more directly with major ad-tech companies, launching a cloud-based service that lets brands and agencies manage TV and digital buying across platforms to targeted audiences.
Today, at its annual Adobe Summit conference for customers, the company launched Adobe Advertising Cloud, which combines Adobe’s Media Optimizer tools with technology it gained from acquiring TubeMogul in December for $540 million.
“All of that data, if it can’t be seamlessly activated against media, isn’t that valuable,” said Keith Eadie, vp of revenue and partnerships for the Adobe Advertising Cloud.
. “So by adding a scaled media buying platform that’s fully integrated with those data solutions, you provide brand and agencies with both sides of the coin that makes them that much more efficient.”
Adobe is hoping to stand out from the rest by taking a more neutral stance in the world of walled gardens like Facebook and Google. Eadie, who previously served as chief marketing officer at TubeMogul, said he thinks brands and agencies will want to partner with a company that’s more independent when it comes to selling advertising and data.
The Advertising Cloud in a way seems like a followup to the “data co-op” Adobe introduced during last year’s summit. The idea was to offer marketers a chance to pool their data together for better metrics along with more personalized and accurate content and targeting.
“I think with some of the missteps these companies have made, brands and agencies have become more emboldened with what they are willing to demand,” Eadie said. “There are advertisers making deals that would have been unheard of a couple of years ago.”
The Advertising Cloud will be a part of a broader rollout by Adobe called the Experience Cloud that will bring all of the company’s cloud businesses—such as the marketing and analytics clouds—together under the same umbrella platform. The Experience Cloud will also help Adobe to expand Sensei, its machine learning framework that can help apply algorithms across across cloud services for users.
“With one click I want to turn one portion of my traffic to the machine that says ‘you decide,'” said Kevin Lindsay, director of product marketing for Adobe Marketing Cloud.
