We’ve seen firsthand how AI is affecting marketing and according to the Adobe 2025 AI and Digital Trends report, 86% of marketing leaders say generative AI will significantly increase content speed and volume. Using AI in marketing offers an exciting opportunity to create more meaningful and dynamic customer connections in real time. The question is no longer whether AI will reshape marketing, but how we harness its power responsibly to elevate creativity, deepen customer connections and drive business outcomes.
It's no surprise that marketing leaders are prioritising AI investments for 2025. However, this new technology isn’t replacing people. Even with advancements in AI, 69% of leaders are planning to increase spending on talent. At Adobe, we believe AI should amplify human potential, not replace it.
Our approach — what we call “human-centred AI” — ensures that marketing and creativity remain deeply personal, authentic and impactful. When AI directly complements your marketing talent, you’ll unleash a level of creativity to make customer experiences more relevant, yielding greater customer satisfaction and delivering the growth your business needs. Now is the time for marketing leaders to move beyond experimentation and start empowering their employees to use AI in their highest impact use cases.
The roadblocks to widespread AI adoption in marketing.
We know how overwhelming content demands can be for marketing teams right now. Consumers expect personalised, seamless and relevant experiences across every touchpoint, but traditional marketing and content generation methods just can’t keep pace. Organisations that successfully integrate AI are seeing measurable gains in efficiency, creativity and customer engagement. Yet despite AI’s promise, many marketers remain sceptical.
Here are the three biggest challenges we see marketing leaders facing when it comes to using AI:
- Identifying high-value use cases for AI: AI should be a force multiplier, not a substitute for human creativity, but many companies are unsure how to prioritise use cases where the technology will return the most value. Many fear that AI may produce generic or even unhelpful experiences that dilute brand authenticity, but an intentional and focused implementation can enhance creativity and strategic impact.
- Bridging the gap between ideation and impact: Too often, AI is confined to content ideation, leaving marketers unaware of its practical, enterprise-level impact. The future of AI in marketing lies in seamlessly integrating and scaling AI across data analysis, content creation and marketing orchestration.
- Navigating ethical AI adoption: Marketers need AI that is responsible, secure and enterprise ready. Trust, transparency and brand safety must be non-negotiable in any AI-driven strategy.
Adobe’s human-centred AI — a differentiated approach.
Adobe has pioneered a vision where data, AI and creativity come together in marketing to power more engaging and connected experiences. Adobe has empowered the creative community for over 40 years, making us uniquely qualified to develop AI tools and features that elevate and expand creativity in marketing and customer experiences.
Our approach is distinct:
- AI-powered personalisation: Real-time, customer-first marketing is no longer a competitive advantage — it’s an imperative. Adobe is seamlessly integrating AI into marketers and creators’ existing tools and workflows, enabling more relevant and impactful customer interactions.
- Agentic AI: Moving forward, agentic AI will let brands automate complex workflows and orchestrate connected customer journeys, making every touchpoint feel effortless and intuitive for the customer while decreasing the complexity for brands and eliminating the burden of mundane tasks.
- Creativity and AI for unmatched brand expression: With tools like Adobe Firefly and Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, brands can create content at unprecedented scale without sacrificing creativity or brand consistency.
Real-world AI in action.
At Adobe, we don’t just talk about AI — we use it every day. Our marketing teams use AI to accelerate content production, automate data-driven customer journeys, access insights faster and enhance campaign performance. For instance, our internal creative and marketing teams use Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing to quickly develop high-performing content variants, increasing engagement while maintaining creative excellence.
One standout example — Adobe used AI-powered content generation within campaigns for our global creativity conference, Adobe MAX, to create design variations for experimentation and testing, helping improve content relevance and engagement. This variety helped identify one treatment which drove a 57% uplift in engagement. This wasn’t about replacing creatives. It was about empowering them to do their best work faster and with greater impact.
What’s next? The age of agentic AI.
The next wave of AI innovation expands beyond content generation — it’s about autonomously managing complex, multichannel marketing workflows. In fact, recent Adobe research found that 65% of marketing practitioners have started using AI agents to automate processes like tagging assets, assigning tasks and reviewing content. These AI agents are working to deliver efficiency gains and smarter support for marketers while providing consumers with a concierge-like experience of convenience, speed and personalisation. This is the future we’re building at Adobe.
Join us at Adobe Summit 2025 to explore industry-defining announcements that will shape the next decade of AI-powered marketing.
Rachel Thornton is the chief marketing officer for Adobe’s enterprise business. She is committed to helping businesses create amazing customer experiences at the intersection of marketing, creativity and AI. Rachel develops marketing, messaging, positioning strategies and activations that expand awareness of Adobe as the world’s best marketing and AI platform for delivering brand-changing customer experiences. Her team amplifies Adobe’s unique enterprise story in ways that energise, celebrate and empower CMOs and experience makers worldwide.
Rachel has more than 25 years of experience in B2B technology marketing, having held leadership roles at Amazon/AWS, Salesforce, Cisco Systems and Microsoft. She has deep experience building and scaling enterprise marketing, customer acquisition and self-service revenue contributions. Rachel has also driven go-to-market strategy with field marketing, advertising, sports marketing and events teams, including several years running marquee customer events like re:Invent and Dreamforce.
