Ad budgets are rising as Adobe leans on its own AI-powered ad platforms. The company is testing new agentic AI and generative tools to optimize campaigns. Early results show a shift in spend and strategy.
Adobe is putting its own digital marketing and advertising technology to the test, using advanced agentic AI and generative optimization tools to manage its growing ad spend. For professionals in publishing, content, and media, this move signals how major platforms are now relying on their own solutions to drive performance and measure ROI.
In the lead-up to Cannes Lions, Adobe Advertising rolled out several new products, including GenStudio for Commerce Media Networks, GenStudio for Performance Marketing, and Creative Agent for Firefly and Creative Cloud. These launches target the expanding budgets in retail media, performance, and creative platforms. Adobe is not just selling these tools to clients-its own marketing teams use them to manage campaigns across its product suite, a practice known internally as dogfooding.
Steve Week, director of performance marketing at Adobe, said his team closely tracks returns on every dollar spent, comparing results from Adobe Advertising with platforms like Google DV360. In 2025, Adobe increased its advertising budget to $1.4 billion, up more than 30% from the previous year, according to Bloomberg. Much of this investment promoted Adobe's AI tools through TV ads and major event sponsorships.
Week's team of media strategists uses data to align business goals-such as quarterly revenue targets for Acrobat-with campaign performance. While AI supports creative optimization and measurement, strategic decisions remain human-driven, sometimes enhanced by custom algorithms for deeper insights.
Adobe runs campaigns across multiple platforms, including DV360, Quantcast, Yahoo, Zeta, and The Trade Desk, selecting channels based on campaign objectives. The company has expanded its ecosystem with new AI-driven tools, but it remains to be seen if increased spending is delivering stronger results. Week and other executives continue to evaluate the impact and explore new options.
Looking ahead, Week suggested that advertisers may soon rely on AI agents to manage budgets, audiences, and KPIs, though human oversight is still required. He noted that while platforms like Claude can make recommendations, they lack full context on campaign setup and creative strategy, making human insight essential for actionable decisions. Marketers would need to connect internal dashboards to external ad supply sources for full automation, but proprietary logic and algorithms still drive bidding and targeting.
The rise in Adobe's ad spending followed the appointment of Lara Balazs as chief marketing officer, after her tenure at Intuit. Adobe disclosed that most of its ad investment now supports Acrobat and Creative Cloud, with campaigns focused on increasing B2C usage. Creative Cloud targets young decision-makers and professionals in marketing and business, while Acrobat campaigns focus on HR, sales, legal, and small business audiences. For B2B, Acrobat is aimed at companies with 5 to 500 employees.
Adobe reports that 70% of its Acrobat and Creative product ad spend now flows through Adobe Advertising, citing improved performance over The Trade Desk and DV360. Campaigns span multiple formats, including connected TV. This approach reflects a broader industry trend, as seen when DoubleVerify launched an AI-powered engine to automate media buying and campaign optimization, connecting ad-verification data directly to execution (read more about DoubleVerify's AI automation efforts).
Adobe Inc. is a global software company headquartered in San Jose, California. As of 2025, the company reported annual revenues exceeding $19 billion and employed more than 29,000 people worldwide. Adobe's Creative Cloud and Acrobat products are widely used by professionals in design, publishing, and business sectors.
