Adobe achieves 200% brand visibility boost as AI marketing reshapes product discovery

Adobe Tackles the Shift From Traditional Search Engines to AI-Driven Marketing

Adobe is confronting a fundamental transformation in how consumers discover products, as AI marketing replaces decades-old playbooks built around search engine optimization. The company's Chief Marketing Officer, Lara Balazs, reports that conversations with peers across Fortune 500 companies have shifted dramatically. "For years it was always, 'Spend less with more impact,'" Balazs explains. "Now I hear, 'There's AI. Do that.'" 1

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The directive reflects an urgent reality facing marketing leaders: as product discovery moves from Google to ChatGPT and other AI-driven interfaces, traditional metrics no longer capture how consumers make purchasing decisions. Brands that fail to appear in AI-generated responses risk being excluded from consideration before customers ever reach their websites. Adobe experienced this firsthand after observing declines in traffic and revenue tied to traditional search, prompting the company to investigate how large language models were influencing customer behavior 1

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LLM Optimizer Tool Delivers 200% Increase in Brand Visibility

To address declining visibility in traditional search, Adobe developed its LLM Optimizer tool, designed specifically to track and improve how often the company's products appear in AI-generated responses. The results proved significant: after deploying the tool, Adobe saw a 200% increase in brand visibility for products including Acrobat and Firefly 1

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While marketers are still assessing how to measure visibility within AI-generated responses—including tracking how often a brand is mentioned or recommended—the early signal indicates a fundamental shift in brand discovery. Understanding how AI systems surface and recommend products is becoming as critical as understanding how consumers search, particularly as more users task AI systems with comparing products, summarizing reviews, explaining features, and recommending purchases 1

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The Evolving Role of CMOs Demands Cross-Functional Collaboration

The shift toward AI-driven marketing has expanded the scope of marketing beyond campaigns into enterprise-level decisions involving technology, data infrastructure, and workflow design. Balazs emphasizes that technical literacy and cross-functional collaboration have become essential. "If you are not talking to your CFO all the time, your CIO, your CTO, any business constituent around that C-suite table, you really are at a disadvantage," she notes 1

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Marketing Strategies Adapt Through Mission Teams and Deliberate AI Integration

As AI capabilities advance, companies are moving beyond experimentation toward more deliberate decisions about where AI should be embedded in day-to-day work. Balazs encourages marketing organizations to start with a use case tied to a specific business objective, with each initiative having an executive sponsor, clear accountability, and a team willing to test, learn, and refine before scaling 1

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Team structures are evolving in parallel. Adobe and other organizations are assembling multidisciplinary groups—what Balazs calls mission teams—organized around business objectives rather than traditional functions. These teams bring together marketers, engineers, product managers, and data specialists, enabling organizations to move more quickly as technology changes every few months 1

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. The shift reflects a broader transformation where AI is evolving faster than most marketing organizations can adapt, forcing leaders to build new playbooks in real time.