Our latest study uncovers how consumers really engage with content today — and how brands can turn scattered, outdated campaigns into personalised experiences that capture attention and drive results.

Key findings.

• Nearly half (42%) of consumers surveyed want brands to produce more short-form videos.
• Brands that employ misleading claims and aggressive sales tactics in campaigns drive away 71% of surveyed respondents.
• Value focused buzzwords such as “free delivery” and “save big” attract the most website visits, influencing 74% of surveyed consumers.
• Emojis (62%) and slang (43%) make consumers more likely to visit brand websites, according to American consumers surveyed.

Customers are abandoning brands that don’t get personal.

Your relationship with your customers is a priceless one. And like any good relationship, both sides want to feel heard, understood and valued. When it comes to content, this means giving your customer information that’s relevant to their personal needs and interests across every channel and every device at any moment.

But delivering this level of content at scale consistently and reliably, across hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of customers, isn’t a simple task for any size team. And despite your best efforts, without the right tools in place, your marketing content could become overrun with outdated messages, irrelevant content and hard-to-find information. When customers encounter this kind of disjointed marketing, it doesn’t take long for them to jump ship and seek out your competitors.

To further understand these evolving consumer expectations within content personalisation, we surveyed over 1,000 Americans to explore their preferences. This analysis aimed to provide performance marketers with insights for campaign optimisation — such as desired content formats and preferred delivery channels to increase performance metrics. We also examined specific campaign elements, such as buzzwords, slang, emojis and colour palettes, to gauge their impact on brand perception and resonance with different demographics. Furthermore, we identified key purchase barriers to highlight potential pitfalls that can erode customer trust.

Understanding your audience’s content preferences.

In 2025, performance marketers must understand their target demographics' content preferences to connect with consumers. Our research — revealing desired frequency and formats — can help you to optimise campaigns for your audiences.

How often do users prefer to engage with their favourite brands?

Our research indicates a clear consumer preference for brand touchpoints to occur twice a week. Specifically, consumers surveyed want new campaign content on social media and SMS three times a week but only twice via email.

Platform preferences among generations.

In relation to personalised content platform preferences, a previous Adobe study highlighted that consumers surveyed value content personalisation most through email (50%), but there was a significant generational divide.

The same generational divide exists for consumer preferences for social media engagement patterns. The survey showed older demographics (Baby Boomers and Gen X) primarily interact with brands on Facebook, while younger Americans (Millennials and Gen Z) gravitate towards YouTube.

Interestingly, despite their Facebook preference, older-generation respondents crave long-form video content. Conversely, all other generations studied prefer short-form videos, with Gen Z respondents showing a 174% greater appetite for short-form content than Baby Boomers.

With distinct generational preferences, leveraging AI-driven content generation capabilities in your content supply chain to support varied output requirements is key. Generative AI presents unprecedented opportunities to scale content personalisation, align with nuanced generational preferences and maximise impact.

Capturing consumer attention with campaign personalisation.

Now that we have pinpointed where and how often consumers prefer to engage, let’s look at preferences of personalisation methods within campaigns to ensure brand compliance and drive optimal website conversions.

Diving into campaign copy that resonates with consumers, our research uncovered that language focused on value and benefits resonates strongly amidst today's economic climate. Respondents gravitated toward terms like "free delivery" and "save big," reflecting a desire for advantageous deals. Additionally, the urgency conveyed by phrases such as "limited-time offer" significantly elevates conversion likelihood (45%). Finally, social proof remains a potent motivator, with buzzwords like "bestseller" and "#1 rated" capturing the attention of Gen Z respondents most effectively (47%).

Use of colour and emojis.

Colour also plays a crucial role in campaign optimisation. Blue emerges as the frontrunner across all demographics studied, with 54% of consumers indicating it captures their attention, followed by red (44%) and gold (37%). Regarding emojis, 62% of consumers agreed emoji usage would encourage them to visit a brand's site. Nearly three in four Gen Z respondents agreed, favouring emojis like ?? (28%), ✨ (27%) and ❤️ (26%), highlighting how emojis function as a distinct language for this digital-native generation.

Incorporating Gen Z slang in targeted media.

Including contemporary slang in campaign copy shows promise, with 43% of all consumers and 55% of Gen Z respondents, reporting it could drive conversion. Specifically, 'It's giving…' emerged as the most effective slang term for Gen Z respondents (31%). Meanwhile, over one in five Gen Z surveyed says incorporating "slay" will boost conversions. These insights underscore the importance of a flexible campaign strategy that supports dynamic content variation.

To utilise these marketing trends, performance marketers must understand what resonates with their audience and implement agile processes that fuel the content supply chain and allow for rapid content creation and deployment. Tools like Adobe's GenStudio for Performance Marketing enable performance marketers to scale AI-driven campaign content creation with linguistic and visual elements to effectively personalise content.

Cultivating trust and avoiding common content mistakes.

Our research reveals a range of campaign content preferences that can help to inform more targeted marketing strategies. That said, even well-personalised campaigns may fall short if consumer trust is compromised or key issues go unaddressed.

What are the top trust signals for users in content?

According to our research, leveraging user-generated content, such as customer reviews, is paramount in establishing trust with your audience. While other trust signals — like social proof reflected in follower numbers — rank lower overall, they still boost brand trust for purchase decisions by 10% more among Gen Z and millennial respondents than older generations. In contrast, older generations trust brands 16% more than Gen Z and Millennials when they provide clear contact information, emphasising the importance of brand consistency in delivering reliable information.

Tactics that turn users away from brands.

According to our study, misleading claims and aggressive sales tactics have emerged as the most significant barriers to purchase (71%). For performance marketers looking to convert on social media, web and email, it's crucial to avoid misleading claims that can erode trust and negatively impact campaign performance. Similarly, those focusing on SMS marketing should avoid aggressive sales tactics to deliver the positive customer experiences consumers prefer in that channel and optimise campaigns.

The research is clear — content variation at scale is key to engaging audiences with authentic, personalised brand touchpoints that resonate. At Adobe, we know firsthand how hard it can be to create personalised, relevant content across audiences and channels at scale. Here are the three ways we’re able to do it.

First, create a workflow that works for everyone.

When marketing work is created, reviewed and tracked through disparate tools, processes slow to a halt. We’ve all been on a team where assets are manually uploaded, unnecessarily duplicated and reviewed over email or another static tool. As a result, work is difficult to align, hard to prioritise and sometimes misses the mark altogether.

On the other hand, when you bring together project and task management with social collaboration, real-time reporting and strategic planning, your teams can focus on what they do best — creating and delivering the experiences that drive real growth.

Power content supply chains with Workfront and GenStudio.

Adobe content supply chain solutions, Workfront and GenStudio for Performance Marketing, centralise marketing operations, content creation and activation with a single collaborative platform.

Workfront streamlines intake, planning and project management, ensuring full visibility and governance across marketing workflows. GenStudio for Performance Marketing builds on this foundation by centralising content insights from multiple channels, connecting generative AI-driven content creation, campaign activation and performance optimisation.

With capabilities for real-time content generation, global localisation and culturalisation, teams can efficiently adapt messaging and creative assets across regions. GenStudio for Performance Marketing also supports deep personalisation by supporting copy and image generation based on regional or brand guidelines for consistent, scalable execution across channels. The result is faster content velocity, improved campaign performance and seamless marketing experience from initial request to activation.

Prioritise — but be flexible about it.

While demand for content has increased, it hasn’t got easier to meet that demand. Creative teams are often overwhelmed with work requests while every stakeholder thinks their request is the most important. All this can make it hard to align the work with the organisation’s strategic goals, let alone accommodate the quick market pivots and evolving strategies that are necessary to keep customers engaged.

The world of content moves fast and is always evolving. Which means it’s ever more important to work with tools that clearly connect the work back to the overarching strategy, allow iteration and flexibility and include real-time dashboards that track and measure progress across all major milestones.

Meet business goals and customer needs by delivering content at scale.

Adobe content supply chain solutions are designed to meet business goals and evolving customer needs by scaling content creation through a blend of intelligent features, AI integration and user-centred design. The applications support a range of user groups — from established creative professionals to small and medium-sized businesses — by streamlining workflows, enabling faster content delivery and promoting personalisation, experimentation and localisation. Adobe for Business aligns tools and capabilities to simplify campaign execution, reduce inefficiencies and boost collaboration across teams by:

• Streamlining content creation and review through generative AI, reducing manual effort and accelerating workflows.
• Catering to diverse user segments, including creatives and SMBs, with tools tailored to their needs and working styles.
• Delivering content at scale by enabling collaboration, reusability and personalisation across channels.

Finally, let humans be creative — standardise the rest.

You hired your creative team members for their creativity — you don’t want to be wasting their time with lengthy review cycles, manual project tracking or delayed project timelines. Doing that not only makes for an unhappy creative team, but it can also make it very difficult to meet business goals with the speed and agility that’s required to deliver meaningful experiences to every customer at the right moment.

Instead, let Adobe solutions automate the busy work — from managing workflows and review cycles with Workfront, to automating bulk content creation in Adobe Creative Cloud, to resizing and adapting assets for different channels using Adobe Experience Manager Assets. By Automating these repetitive tasks, your creative team can focus on what they do best — bringing human creativity and strategic insights to each project. With teams focused on the most important work, you’ll maximise resources, budgets and speed without exceeding capacity. As a bonuses, your creative team will be much happier.

Reduce manual admin work with automation.

Adobe content supply chain solutions help teams reduce manual work by automating key workflows and providing tools that improve flexibility and efficiency. The applications address priorities like collaboration, creation and engagement through features such as task and asset management and seamless controls to simplify configuration and integrations reducing administrative overhead.  Content supply chain solutions also streamline brand access, making it easier to create consistent, on-brand assets and campaigns and boost productivity.

We did it — and you can, too.

Delivering great content is imperative to creating the personalised, relevant and entertaining experience your customers want. By fixing your workflows, empowering your teams and using automation, you can meet customer expectations while also giving your teams more room to be truly creative.

Learn more about the three steps to reimagine your marketing to build brand loyalty and clear the way for more personalised customer experiences.

Methodology.

We surveyed 1,001 Americans to explore campaign content preferences. At a 95% confidence level, the consumer study has a 3% margin of error. Because this exploratory research relied on self-reported data, it's important to acknowledge that respondents may have biases or discrepancies between their answers and their actual experiences.

https://business.adobe.com/fragments/resources/cards/thank-you-collections/content-supply-chain