Adobe’s CEO says digital content has a persistent tailwind

Regardless of whether the US economy succumbs to a recession this year or next, “digital is going to be a tailwind,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. And while the way customers and large businesses are talking about content and marketing may have shifted somewhat, “we still see a lot of interest in digital,” he says.

Narayen points out that more people are making content than ever before, and consumption of that content is also soaring: “It’s all up and to the right,” he said in an interview with Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon at the Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco. “The creative business has seen this massive influx of new people.”

Goldman Sachs Research also expects the “creator economy” of individuals with their own brands and online audiences to grow substantially in the coming years. Our analysts forecast the total addressable market of this creativity ecosystem to nearly double to $480 billion in 2027 from $250 billion today.

At the other end of the spectrum, Narayen sees signs that large companies are adjusting their marketing efforts. If a year ago executives were focused on driving revenue growth at just about any cost, Narayen says, they’re now focusing somewhat more on where the marketing budget is being spent, how the content is being automated, and how they can be more productive and improve the return on investment.

“But big picture, they’re only going to look at digital as an area for investment,” he says. Narayen also cautions against putting too much focus on the economic outlook. “There are going to be business cycles,” he adds. “But if we over-index around the current business cycle we might lose the big opportunities.”

In digital marketing, Narayen says a major area of growth is in the customer data platform. Whereas five to 10 years ago the focus was on the recording and storage of customer data, he says that’s irrelevant now. “What’s relevant today is that the moment you need to activate that information to deliver the experience you want, do you have real-time customer data infrastructure to target the customer the way you want?”

He also sees signs that marketing is being redefined, and says there’s a growing confluence between the chief marketing officer and the chief information officer. “This is on every CIO’s radar,” Narayen says. “What is my core customer data platform?”

When it comes to generative artificial intelligence (GAI), Narayen says it’s critical to focus on the interface so that users — including creators, marketers, and people making documents — are able to be more creative and more productive by describing what they need in the interface and quickly getting the results they’re looking for.

“We’re convinced it dramatically expands the number of users,” he says of GAI. That includes people who want to create content as well as marketers aiming to build more agile campaigns.

One of the key differences between GAI and other cycles of technology development is the sheer number of people who are working on it, Narayen says. And he notes that he’s never seen people gravitate toward a single field of technology as quickly as they have toward GAI. He points out that the resources and attention pouring into the sector will speed up development and solve problems more quickly, leading to even more innovation.

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