The growth unlock.
Turning content into a growth engine with AI.
JUMP TO SECTION
Content transformation by industry
Retail: Delivering personalized content
Consumer Packaged Goods: Driving scale and agility
High Tech: Enabling scale and consistency
Pharmaceuticals: Streamlining creation and approval
Financial Services: Deepening banking relationships
Foreword
At a time where brands need to power more personalized experiences and deeper customer relationships than ever, AI can be the differentiator that turns content from a cost center into a growth engine. That said, leaders are challenged to answer key questions: How do we prove the value of this investment? How do we protect our brand? Where do we start, and where do we go next?
We designed this research to answer these very questions. Adobe partnered with Accenture, a marketing transformation and advisory services leader, to conduct surveys and provide expert analysis to gauge the potential financial impact from an AI-enabled content creation and production transformation. We assessed top areas of value across six major industry sectors, highlighting where leaders may wish to place their bets to drive the greatest impact. For more information on our research and methodology behind the financial projections, please refer to the Methodology section below.
The case for investment is clear: organizations can realize an average 7.1X net ROI over three years and nearly $200M in annual value1. But AI’s impact is not just about financial returns—it’s about ensuring brands stay ahead as the pace of innovation accelerates and the window for competitive advantage narrows. Those who act now will be best positioned to deliver long-term impact.
1. Value estimated for a $30 billion annual revenue organization.
Content as a growth engine in the age of AI.
The AI ROI challenge.
CMOs today face a wide range of challenges in driving growth while managing tightening budgets. This is why marketing leaders are increasingly turning to AI to accelerate business transformation.
Initially focused on cost and efficiencies, leading brands are now exploring AI’s ability to drive revenue growth and redefine their industry position. That said, proving the ROI of these initiatives is at a higher premium than ever, and pressure is only mounting as the number of potential technologies to invest in grows by the hundreds each year.2
of marketing leaders are responsible for meeting a revenue goal.
report very high ROI visibility, down from 33% the previous year.
Solving for the content bottleneck.
But only 25% report very high ROI visibility, down from 33% the previous year. Over the last decade, marketers have advanced personalization efforts, making major investments in customer data, audience segmentation, and journey orchestration capabilities. However, content continues to be a key bottleneck for personalization at scale; marketers can reach the right customers at the right time and in the right channels, but lack the full breadth and depth of content needed to engage them effectively.
As a result, brands are leaving opportunities on the table and struggling to maximize campaign performance, gain market share across geographies, and activate new engagement channels as they emerge.
“Marketing can’t move at the speed of the customer without an agile, deep pipeline of high-quality content. When production lags, even the best strategies stall, and brand impact suffers.”
Adobe Content Supply Chain Expert
A generational shift for content.
GenAI has fundamentally broken the linear relationship between content production and headcount, yet many leaders still find transforming this part of the content supply chain daunting. With uncertainty around where to start, what value to expect, and how to manage brand risk, organizations risk getting stuck in a cycle of experiments and fail to scale new use cases that deliver sustainable value.
To bridge this gap, leaders need a clear roadmap—one that prioritizes the opportunities and provides an actionable framework for AI-driven transformation. This research, informed by over 1,000 marketing and creative professionals, breaks down the highest value areas of content creation and production transformation. It provides a blueprint for CMOs and their teams, outlining what to prioritize, where to find the biggest drivers of revenue growth and operational efficiency, and how these investments can help them navigate major industry shifts.
of marketers have either experimented with or adopted GenAI solutions.
have advanced capabilities across the full creation process.
The top value drivers for a content transformation by industry.
Industries and areas of transformation.
We focused our analysis on marketing organizations in six industries and across six distinct areas of transformation:
Where the value opportunity lies.
The value map below highlights the potential value unlocked across these six industries and transformation areas, showcasing how a $30B-revenue organization can achieve remarkable growth. Across industries, we see an average opportunity of ~$190M annual incremental impact, representing a 7.1X ROI. The following chart shows how this value breaks down by industry:
Industry deep dives.
Each industry faces its own set of pressures and has unique opportunities to deliver value and advance their competitive positioning. In the following sections, we will explore industry-specific trends and key areas of impact from an enabled AI-powered content creation and production transformation.
For easy access, quickly navigate to each deep dive by clicking below:
Consumer Packaged Goods
Driving scales and agility amid a shifting industry landscape
Consumer Packaged Goods
Driving scales and agility amid a shifting industry landscape
Retail
Delivering hyper-personalized content and omnichannel experiences.
Industry context.
Retailers sit on a goldmine of customer data, providing a strong foundation for personalization at scale. That said, marketing teams continue to be challenged in delivering it due to a rapidly evolving landscape: from multi-location activations and daily promotions, to more SKUs, markets, and product launches; content has become a bottleneck. Retail media networks represent both a significant revenue stream and an escalating content challenge, requiring marketers to frequently tailor, refresh, refine, and optimize content based on real-time insights.
The struggle to meet this demand without sacrificing quality, brand consistency, and ultimately performance is real, and sets the stage for a strategic evolution in content workflows.
“Retailers are under pressure to show up authentically across digital and physical channels, and adapt to changing trends, promotional strategies and consumer sentiment. Creating agile, high performing, and on-brand content to do so has become increasingly challenging.”
Adobe retail strategist
Strategic opportunity.
Retailers successfully transforming content creation workflows are taking a coordinated, top-down approach, melding existing consumer insights with AI-driven content adaptation to power omnichannel experiences. For a $30B retail organization, our research estimates that a content creation and production transformation can unlock $340M in annual value. Roughly $200M of this value comes from revenue growth via more personalized, targeted content, and the remaining $140M come from productivity and efficiency gains. In all, this transformation can deliver a 9.2X net ROI in three years.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
This evolution requires clarity around how roles and processes are changing with AI. For example, creative teams leveraging GenAI in creative applications and scaled production tools are reclaiming 17 hours per week while boosting content impact, resulting in a combined $140M of opportunity. In turn, creatives are shifting focus to higher-value work and delivering design systems that scale across the rest of the organization.
Campaign teams in retail are also starting to leverage AI to seamlessly remix, test and optimize content in connected workflows, driving an additional $78M in value.
of retailers agree that developing scaled content personalization is worth the investment, higher than any other industry.
Cross-industry Survey
Bringing it to life
Coach reimagines handbag design with Adobe Firefly.
Faced with slow iteration times and inconsistent prototypes for new handbag designs, Coach leveraged Firefly Custom Models to generate digital twins of its iconic Tabby handbags. By safely training Firefly with proprietary assets, the team generated photorealistic concepts that aligned with the brand’s identity, significantly improving development cycles.
This helped Coach accelerate new concept reviews, facilitate feedback in consumer focus groups, and scale marketing content for social media and in-store merchandising efforts, unlocking new levels of efficiency and impact. Read more here.
With AI, retail organizations can overcome current challenges and drive authentic, impactful content across campaigns and experiences. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
Consumer Packaged Goods
Driving scale and agility amid a shifting industry landscape.
Industry context.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) organizations are experiencing a rapid evolution driven by shifting customer expectations and intensifying competition. New entrants, such as digital-native micro-brands, are driving the need for more frequent product drops, real-time interactions, and authentic engagement in new channels. Established CPG brands are starting to adopt more direct-to-consumer strategies and rethink operating models, especially around content creation and activation. Addressing this opportunity will be essential for survival and sustained market relevance.
“Digital has lowered the barriers to entry, allowing new CPG brands to carve out space quickly. These microbrands are nimble and can adapt faster to trends, giving them an edge in capturing consumer attention.”
Accenture CPG Marketing Expert
Strategic opportunity.
With AI, CPG marketers can be more agile, interact meaningfully with consumers, and increase the depth and breadth of content needed to compete on a global scale. Our research estimates that a $30B CPG company can realize more than $250M incremental annual benefit from a content creation and production transformation, delivering over a 10X net ROI in three years. About $162M, or 65%, of this value comes from revenue growth driven by richer, more engaging and targeted content. The remaining $90M results from efficiency gains and faster production cycles, increased productivity, and lower costs.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Key opportunities for CPG lie in scaling asset variations and optimizing campaign content: Over $80M of the estimated value can be unlocked by leveraging AI and automation to produce all necessary asset permutations for marketing. An additional $64M comes from strengthening campaign content through unified workflows streamlining the editing, testing and optimization of content for campaigns.
Moreover, in an industry where agency reliance has been the norm, some CPG leaders are moving to hybrid models, continuing to outsource key components of the creative process, while in-sourcing adaptation and scaling for product line and channel extension campaigns. We see an opportunity to drive an added $64M in value from rethinking creative ideation and development workflows across in-house and agency groups.
time savings across the creative process from AI and automation, according to CPG marketers.
Cross-industry Survey
Bringing it to life
Driving immersive e-commerce experiences at Gatorade.
In October 2024, Gatorade launched a pioneering digital experience on its e-commerce platform that enables consumers to personalize its iconic squeeze bottles. Using Adobe Firefly Services, the brand generated hundreds of thousands of unique, on-brand designs, empowering creative self-expression for their athletes that boosted both engagement and brand loyalty.
Xavi Cortadellas, Senior Director of Marketing at Gatorade, noted, “Now athletes everywhere can engage with our brand in a fun, accessible way... personalization possibilities are virtually endless, deepening our direct connections with consumers and reinforcing brand loyalty.” Read more here.
CPG companies have a unique opportunity to leverage AI to forge direct relationships between their brands and consumers and to deliver more agile and performant experiences with content. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
High Tech
Enabling scale and consistency to boost B2B and B2C marketing.
Industry context.
High tech organizations have complex product lines and go-to market motions spanning B2B, B2B2C, and B2C, making consistent experiences critical. Content creation, asset reuse and brand consistency are particularly challenging given the industry’s vast internal ecosystem and reliance on channel partners, from VARS to ISVs to managed service providers. In the case of B2B, the content creation challenge extends even further into sales, customer success, BDR, product marketing, and event teams that create content to foster account-based experiences.
Most high tech organizations use legacy tools and processes that are highly siloed and inefficient. Transforming content creation and production can accelerate campaigns and customer experiences across segments, account teams, and lines of business.
Close to
of high-tech marketers reported that their brand struggles with consistency.
Cross-industry Survey
Strategic opportunity.
High tech CMOs can harness AI-powered solutions to uniquely address both B2B and B2C needs. Our research estimates that a $30B high tech company can unlock $220M in annual value through this transformation, delivering close to an 8X net ROI over 3 years. Of this value, close to $120M comes from driving productivity and efficiency gains, while the remaining $100M is tied revenue growth from increased content impact and volume.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
The largest opportunity ties to the scaled production of derivative assets, where rapid bulk asset creation, editing and assembly capabilities across formats can unlock $61M.
Another major unlock, representing $46M, comes from empowering non-creative teams to easily create content while adhering to brand standards. By enabling self-service of content creation and adaptation, teams such as account representatives, regional marketing leads, field enablement and event marketing teams will be empowered to create content that meets their needs and drives results.
“The integration of AI into high tech marketing opens up the possibility for sales teams to create more tailored content for customers on their own, rather than relying solely on creative teams, which could revolutionize how high tech organizations engage buyers.”
Accenture High Tech Marketing Expert
Bringing it to life
IBM redefines digital marketing with Firefly-powered creation.
High tech CMOs can harness AI-powered content creation and production to uniquely address both B2B and B2C needs. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
Pharma
Streamlining creation and approval workflows to drive speed to market.
Industry context.
Marketing content in Pharma influences a broad set of stakeholders—from physicians, to networks, to patients, and advocacy groups. The highly regulated nature of the industry forces marketing teams to balance producing content at a global scale with strict compliance requirements such as medical, legal and regulatory reviews, a dynamic that has historically slowed efforts to the point of impacting business outcomes. Moreover, leaders in the space are evaluating operating models tied to content, exploring hybrid approaches with agency partners.
Marketers in Pharma are
more likely to report delays due to lengthy reviews and approvals
Cross-industry Survey
Strategic opportunity.
For Pharma, AI-powered content creation solutions, combined with advanced workflow and asset management capabilities, can redefine content velocity. We estimate that a $30B Pharma organization can capture close to $110M in annual value from a content creation and production transformation. Roughly $70M of this total comes from increased productivity and operational efficiencies, while the remaining $40M can be attributed to revenue growth via more impactful and targeted content. In all, we estimate a 5.3X three-year net ROI from these investments.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
From a value standpoint, the creation of original content and scaled production of derivative assets encompass the top areas of value in Pharma, representing $50M, or 45%, of the total opportunity. AI-powered creative applications and scaled production capabilities allow teams to deliver content that is relevant across audiences, markets, cultures and life stages.
“Pharmaceutical companies are at different stages in their content transformation journey— some building on existing systems, others re-thinking their approach more broadly. Regardless of where they stand, the goal remains the same: streamline workflows, increase engagement, and leverage GenAI for greater efficiency and speed.”
Adobe Pharma Strategist
Bringing it to life
Pfizer optimized their content supply chain to bring scientific breakthroughs to market faster.
Pharma marketing teams can leverage the integrated power of AI, work and asset management to enhance content creation and boost the awareness of and access to medical advancements worldwide. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
Financial Services
Deepening banking relationships with timely, on-brand content.
Industry context.
Financial Services (FS) organizations often struggle with siloed lines of business, resulting in multiple groups approaching customers with offers, updates, and communications. Growing demand for content from these groups and the push for more personalized experiences are multiplying the need for time-consuming content reviews and approvals mandated by regulatory bodies. This is stretching already overburdened creative teams, and creating the risk of rogue content creation that impacts customer experiences and dilutes the brand.
By streamlining content creation across the organization, FS teams will be able to confidently deliver content tailored to customers’ financial literacy, risk appetite, investment needs, and life stage. This will foster stronger banking relationships and maximize trust and loyalty.
of FS marketers agree content review and approval is a major blocker for total activation speed, more than any other industry.
Cross-industry Survey
Strategic opportunity.
FS marketers can reimagine their content workflows to deliver more campaigns that increase referrals, lower attrition, and increase customer lifetime value. Our research estimates that a $30B FS organization can achieve a 5X ROI over three years by transforming content creation, collaboration and self-service with AI. Roughly $84M of this value comes from productivity and efficiency gains and another $24M in revenue growth, for a total value of over $108M per year.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Key opportunities lie in addressing the dispersed nature of FS institutions. A foundational area to tackle first is streamlining review and approval processes—where leaders have successfully reduced compliance failure rates by up to 80% using integrated workflow management and collaboration tools—while significantly enhancing governance, findability and reuse with integrated asset management solutions.
Once approvals and asset management are streamlined, FS organizations can truly unlock the value of the transformation: the creation of original content and scaled production of asset variants, representing a combined $44M, or 40% of the total opportunity. AI-powered creative applications and scaled production capabilities allow teams to deliver content that is relevant across audiences, channels, and segments.
Additionally, the diversity of lines of business and relationship owners in an FS conglomerate creates an opportunity to empower all teams to consistently and easily create compelling, brand-consistent content. This can both free up creative teams, as well as solve for the “last mile” of content creation”, delivering an additional $21M in annual value.
Bringing it to life
Prudential redefines creative workflows with Adobe solutions.
New, AI-assisted workflows will enable marketing leaders in FS to deliver more personalized and consistent experiences to their customers—to empower the entire organization to create high-quality, on-brand content. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
Media & Entertainment
Moving from blockbusters to breakthrough marketing campaigns.
Industry context.
In Media and Entertainment (M&E), driving audience engagement and reducing subscriber churn are mission-critical. Marketers must continuously deliver engaging, targeted content to keep viewers watching and searching for more.
While media production teams create high-quality content for films, events, series, and more, translating these assets into targeted marketing campaigns often remains a challenge. As a result, marketers in M&E cannot easily adjust or augment core media assets into timely and relevant tune-in, retention and loyalty campaigns.
of M&E marketing leaders are prioritizing both new and existing audiences.
Cross-industry Survey
Strategic opportunity.
M&E organizations can leverage AI to repurpose existing assets for audience engagement and speed up the creation of net new marketing content. Our research shows that a $30B M&E organization can unlock over $90M per year by transforming content creation and production with AI—achieving a 5.5X net ROI within three years. Close to $60M of this value comes from efficiency and productivity gains, with the remaining $32M derived from revenue growth via more targeted and timely content.
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
Value numbers represent steady state after 3 years
The largest value opportunity for M&E marketers comes from effectively scaling and repurposing existing media content, representing $25M in value. By automating repetitive tasks such as asset reformatting, localization and resizing, or more onerous workflows like video reframing, translation, lip synching, and captioning, marketers can quickly scale and test more engagement strategies across channels, audiences and formats.
“GenAI has the potential to supercharge marketing by repurposing assets created during production... this shortens content creation cycles, reduces costs, and ensures brand consistency across promotional materials.”
Accenture M&E Digital Transformation Expert
Bringing it to life
Paramount+ brings IF characters to life with AI-driven social engagement.
M&E marketing leaders have a unique opportunity to transform and augment a treasure trove of production value content into timely and impactful marketing assets. Visit the link below to learn about three practical steps to start (or amplify) your content creation and production evolution.
Click here for steps to accelerate your content transformation.
Three steps to start your content production transformation.
Many leaders encounter challenges when advancing AI-driven use cases without a unified strategy, resulting in fragmented efforts that fail to scale, or excessive time and energy that don’t move the needle. To move beyond the fits-and-starts of subscale initiatives, we recommend the following steps:
1. Select proven, high-value areas for initial focus.
Identify one or two areas of value to start with, collaborating with teams ready to be early adopters. Doing this can help prove out quick wins while creating momentum to continue innovating. Use the analysis in this research as input on where to begin, and expand pilots, use cases, and teams adopting change as you prove out value.
2. Lean into commercial safety and integrated solutions.
Start by selecting AI solutions that prioritize responsible practices, IP protection, trust and brand safety. Prioritize partners and technology providers that easily integrate into your existing content supply chain ecosystem, to ensure faster adoption and minimize disruption.
3. Form a Marketing AI network to complement broader AI efforts.
Establish a cross-functional group to define marketing’s AI priorities, roadmap, and governance. This ensures alignment, shared learnings, and a joint vision with key stakeholders like IT, legal, and compliance teams. While broader AI councils may already exist, they are typically focused on guidelines, standards and tools that apply to all functional groups. Having a marketing-specific council working alongside them will help you proactively drive your priorities with AI.
Leveraging an integrated content creation and production platform within a structured value framework will build the foundation for sustained innovation, positioning marketing content and the teams that oversee it as growth catalysts within the organization.
Methodology
Research approach: Adobe and Accenture partnered to estimate the financial impact of a content creation and production transformation across six areas of value in six distinct industries. Insights are rooted in four research components: survey data, expert interviews, econometric analysis and secondary research.
Cross-Industry survey: Two 30-question online surveys gathered insights from 1,457 professionals across creative, marketing and other teams who actively work on content creation during October and November 2024:
- Geography: Respondents were based in the U.S. and Canada
- Roles: All respondents held full-time positions at the Manager level or above and demonstrated active involvement in the creation of creative content for their brands
- Industries: Retail (n=318), Consumer Packaged Goods (n=269), High Tech (n=214), Financial Services (n=203), Pharmaceuticals (n=217), and Media and Entertainment (n=236)
- Statistical Significance: Survey results maintain a margin of error of ±8 percentage points for percentage- based statistics and ±2 percentage points for averages, assuming a 95% confidence level for both
Expert interviews: 47 individual interviews were conducted to gain qualitative insights across industries. The following subject matter experts were interviewed:
- 9 Accenture creative and design experts (panel of Accenture Employees)
- 15 Accenture industry experts (3 in Retail, 4 in CPG, 1 in Financial Services, 2 in Pharma, 3 in High Tech, 2 in Media and Entertainment)
- 8 Accenture marketing transformation experts (panel built including former CMOs and advisors)
- 15 Adobe experts (comprised of marketing and industry leaders)
Econometric analysis: The following outlines the assumptions and sources used to build the value case model to quantify the value of transforming content creation and production workflows:
- Company size: All calculations based on an organization with $30B annual revenue
- Value capture: 30% in Year 1, 50% in Year 2, and 100% in Year 3
- Risk adjustment: 20% to reflect realistic estimates
- Discount rate: 10%
- Costs: Projected ROI calculations based on estimated benefits and estimated costs of implementing AI-tools.
- Estimated Benefits: Projections are based on survey respondents’ self-reported estimates on the impact of AI-tools in current end-to-end workflows in content creation and production. Findings from the survey pool were then validated by Accenture experts by industry based on observed outcomes from supporting clients in implementing Gen-AI in marketing functions.
- Estimated AI-tool Implementation Costs: Calculations based on estimated incremental costs for technology licensing and support (provided by Adobe), and change management and training required to realize value opportunities.
- Operational efficiency: Includes time savings from streamlined tasks, increased asset reuse, and simplified review and approvals, in addition to reduction of hard costs (e.g., physical production costs and agency spend)
- Revenue growth: Projected revenue lifts from enhanced content impact from more targeted campaigns and higher volume of content, based on industry average CTRs, impressions and conversion rates
Recommended for you
