Adobe Builds Engine To Manage, Serve Promotional Offers Across Media, Devices


Offer Management, an unofficial name for a proof of concept that allows marketers to manage promotional offers across a variety of media, debuted Wednesday. The platform is one of seven prototypes that debuted at the Adobe Summit during the Sneaks session, which showcases the engineering team's prototypes.

Last year Adobe debuted an attribution model and virtual analyst app, which the company officially introduced earlier this week at its summit.

The annual “Summit Sneaks,” hosted this year by Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon, also showcased products around artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things.

"About 60% of what we show during Sneaks makes it to a product," said Steve Hammond, senior director, Customer Success & Product Strategy, Adobe Experience Cloud.

Offer Management is an engine that enables brands to serve the "next best promotional offer." Through data, the platform will identify the offers being shown to consumers and whether they respond. It will also enable marketers to manage the promotions across channels such as desktop and mobile.  

Adobe is looking to solve several challenges. For starters, many marketers still operate in silos. A lack of consistency makes personalizing coupons and offers on the Web and on mobile devices difficult. Promotions become irrelevant, and areseen repeatedly by the same person. In time, artificial intelligence and machine learning should resolve these issues.

In 2016, Adobe managed 27 trillion transactions through its cloud-based services. The platform will have the ability to support "hundreds of thousands of assets," which gives Adobe the opportunity to make Offer Management dynamic in the ways it serves and customizes promotions for consumers.

Hammond said a hotel promotions might serve up as an email to the consumer. Upon check-in to the hotel, the consumer might receive a verbal offer from the clerk -- and then later in the day, perhaps a text message for a promotion at a local restaurant.  

Offer Management will have a dashboard and reporting structure that will give marketers a snapshot of live offers and channels such as mobile, video or display ads being managed and how they perform. The dashboard also will display information on offer placements such as publications or social sites like Facebook where the promotions will serve up.

The offers will tie back into Adobe's analytics platform to determine the return on investments. 

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