Adobe Summit EMEA: Key Innovations

The most important skills for marketers in 2020 will be a combination of art and science, according to Garrett Ilg, Adobe's president EMEA. Speaking at this year's Adobe Summit EMEA in London (May 3-4), he said: "You can have a lot of one, but if you don't have the other, you're not going to be successful."

Illustrating what this means in the real world of day-to-day marketing, the software giant offered a sneak preview of its new Video Ad AI feature. Adobe's Sensei artificial intelligence engine will be able to judge the effectiveness of video ads uploaded to the platform before launch, and suggest ways to improve performance. The tool can also automatically create edits for social media – producing Instagram-ready animated thumbnails in just seconds, for instance.

An even more impressive example of mixing art and science was revealed in the preview of Adobe's Project New View tool. This is Adobe's solution to the difficulties marketers encounter when trying to navigate through reams of customer and business data. Using virtual reality (VR) technology, Project New View enables you to literally navigate through your data in three dimensions, and interact via voice with Sensei to extract deeper insight.

"This is going to have a profound impact on every industry," Adobe senior computer scientist Dylan DePass said in an interview with US business publication Forbes. "It will change the way we act and interact with the digital world."

For more on the impact of AI and VR on marketing, see State of Media: The Fan-First Revolution, Next-Gen Urban Branding, Lessons from Sports Marketing and Youth Marketing Strategy 2018.