The acceleration of AI, notably agentic AI, is reshaping how we think about customer experiences, creativity, and scale. Adobe research and customer conversations make it clear this period isn’t just a technological shift. It’s a strategic inflection point.

We’ve reached a moment rich with transformative opportunities — a chance to reimagine engagement, elevate creative output, and drive growth like never before.

Agentic AI, at its core, is a new kind of collaborator. And it’s redefining how work gets done. AI agents act autonomously, learn from real-time feedback, and work alongside teams to ignite entirely new levels of productivity and creativity. Just as important, agentic AI connects the dots across people, content, and tools, creating a comprehensive ecosystem that powers business growth at scale.

Imagine a marketing team launches a new campaign. Instead of combing through dashboards, they can ask an AI agent to surface customer insights, flag performance anomalies, and recommend optimizations, all in real time. That’s something AI agents, like Adobe Experience Platform Agents, make possible.

The true impact of these agents is still unfolding, but I believe they’re poised to help teams move from repetitive execution to meaningful innovation. They have the potential to accelerate outcomes and deliver experiences that feel more tailored and relevant.

It’s especially encouraging to see marketing and IT aligning their operating models as agentic AI emerges as a cross-functional initiative. For CMOs, this convergence of disciplines and teams around agentic AI, spanning data science, customer experience, product, and creative, opens new possibilities for orchestrating more precise customer journeys. With clearer visibility across touchpoints, marketing leaders can easily map how engagement drives outcome, enabling smarter segmentation and real-time optimization that delivers measurable results.

Planning for this next phase of marketing demands more than just curiosity. It requires a clear vision for agent integration, a resilient data foundation, a strong ethical AI approach, and a commitment to clarity amid complexities.

Take agents from tools to teammates.

As a marketer, what excites me most about agentic AI is its ability to act as a true collaborator. Agents aren't just executing tasks. They’re learning, adapting, and contributing to outcomes. They can analyze vast data sets, personalize content, optimize performance, and even anticipate customer behavior. By handling manual tasks and surfacing actionable insights, agents free up time and mental space for marketers and creatives to focus on what they do best — ideation, storytelling, and innovation. Agents can help develop messaging and campaign concepts for testing, produce asset variations, and tailor experiences to individual customers, all while preserving brand integrity and emotional impact. The real magic happens when agents move from being helpful to being intuitive. When agents identify insights to help marketers understand a customer’s preferences, it creates a sense of connection.

That's the kind of transformation we’re beginning to explore at Adobe. Agentic AI has the potential to empower marketing teams to deliver more personalized experiences at scale, doing so faster and more effectively. As these capabilities develop, I'm optimistic about their potential to amplify talent, accelerate workflows, and deepen customer connections.

Of course, with greater personalization comes greater oversight. The systems behind these experiences must be built with integrity and accountability.

Embed responsibility into every AI decision.

People care deeply about how their data is used. According to the Adobe 2025 AI and Digital Trends report, 45% of consumers say visibility and control over their data is a top priority when engaging with brands — a clear mandate for transparency.

After talking with CMOs and CIOs, it's clear that governance needs to be front and center as we bring agentic AI into our organizations. Building strong governance frameworks, ones with clear accountability, ethical guidelines, and impact monitoring, leads to faster adoption and smoother implementation.

It starts with giving teams the tools and structure to manage AI with care, including:

• Reviewing AI use to ensure it aligns with values and avoids bias.
• Using risk models to gauge impact and guide oversight.
• Monitoring performance to maintain fairness and compliance.

Ethical AI fosters trust with our customers, our teams, and our stakeholders. And when trust is strong, innovation follows.

To make this kind of governance actionable, organizations need systems that support transparency, agility, and intelligent decision-making, and that starts with how we manage and connect our data.

Build a resilient data foundation.

Data infrastructure is central to how marketers understand customers and deliver meaningful experiences. Yet most organizations still face a major challenge. According to a recent survey conducted by Adobe and Incisiv, about 95% struggle with disconnected or incomplete customer data.

Typically, marketers have to manually piece together customer information from different sources. But with modern data pipelines and agentic AI, sources such as website visits, campaign responses, and customer service logs can be connected automatically. This lets marketers build real-time customer segments, run campaign analytics, and customize creative without relying too heavily on analytics teams. Additionally, it gives analytics teams more time to focus on strategy instead of pulling together customer data sets.

This shift — from fragmented data to connected insights — is an imperative many CMOs and CIOs are prioritizing when implementing agentic AI. Instead of sending a one-size-fits-all message to everyone, brands can personalize campaigns based on region, industry, or even buying group. For instance, Lenovo launched a campaign for four products across eight channels, four languages, and three variations, requiring more than 300 different assets. With the help of Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, they were able to scale content creation and personalization, meeting each customer in the moment.

Reaching this deep level of personalization requires platforms that unify data, keep it accurate, and support fast decisions. Flexibility matters too. As marketing leaders, we need AI and data platforms that let us plug into the tools and agents that work best for our teams and goals. That means avoiding rigid platforms that limit how we work or who we work with.

When our data and tools are connected, we can move faster, test more, and deliver experiences that feel personal and relevant, no matter the market or audience.

Navigate complexity with clarity.

Agentic AI is moving fast, but many teams and organizations are still figuring out how to deploy solutions that deliver meaningful ROI. Teams face challenges around integration, governance, and proving business value. With so much conversation happening, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s actionable.

Here at Adobe, we believe clarity makes progress possible. That’s why we’re integrating agentic AI capabilities into our solutions, to help our marketers and creatives focus on what matters most and drive the greatest impact. We’re connecting innovation to practical needs, building tools for better collaboration, and identifying high-value opportunities.

Agentic AI has the potential to unlock smarter workflows, better discoverability, deeper personalization, and increased creative deliverables. Realizing that potential means it must be applied with purpose and integrated into business processes and marketing workflows. That starts with real use cases, setting clear goals, and working together toward the same outcome.

We’re seeing more companies take smart steps forward. They’re testing ideas through pilots and scaling to production, building cross-functional teams, and defining what success looks like. It’s a thoughtful approach, and it shows a vote of confidence in where the technology is headed. These early agentic marketing adopters are already proving what’s possible and creating paths others can follow.

Turning towards what's next.

Agentic AI is not a distant concept. It’s here and already changing how we work. For CMOs, the imperative is clear. We must integrate agents strategically, invest in the right foundations, commit to ethical AI practices, and lead with intention.

Our upcoming report, The State of Customer Experience in an AI-Driven World, helps support this transformation. It offers powerful insights into the ways customer journeys are changing, the role AI plays in brand visibility, how marketing is becoming a growth engine, and more.

The opportunities are more energizing than ever. As AI continues to reshape our day-to-day, the real power lies in combining technology with human insight. In the next blog in this series, I’ll dive into how marketing, creativity, and AI can work together, with people at the center, to build smarter, more authentic experiences. And you can catch up on part one and part two in the series where I explore how AI is transforming marketing fundamentals — from strategy and personalization to brand search and discovery.

Rachel Thornton is Adobe’s chief marketing officer for the enterprise business, helping organizations deliver exceptional customer experiences at the intersection of marketing, creativity, and AI. She leads strategies and activations that position Adobe as the leading marketing and AI platform, while energizing and empowering CMOs and experience makers worldwide.

With more than 25 years in B2B technology marketing, Rachel has held leadership roles at Amazon/AWS, Salesforce, Cisco, and Microsoft. She has built and scaled enterprise marketing, driven customer acquisition and revenue growth, and led go-to-market strategies across field marketing, advertising, sports marketing, and events, including marquee experiences like re:Invent and Dreamforce.

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