Forget Photoshop. Adobe Is a Marketing Company Now | Bloomberg

Unclear how long the premium-priced Adobe creative designer tools business can subsidize the company's acquisition-heavy digital marketing "pivot"; on a related note, see Adobe, Microsoft to take on Salesforce's marketing software, with LinkedIn as a weapon | Reuters

"Factor it all in, and Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen has upended Adobe’s business model and quietly transformed it into that of a marketing company. Adobe has been working full crank to track every interaction a consumer has with a brand: tallying her visits to a brick-and-mortar store and what she buys; using cookies to monitor her web activity and figure out how many devices she has; analyzing her interest in emails about sales or promotions; and incorporating social media monitoring to see what she says about a brand. Adobe can combine all of this with other companies’ data about a person’s income and demographics to try to predict the triggers that would make her buy a new phone or pair of shoes. In essence, Adobe is trying to know a consumer’s decision-making process better than she may know it herself.

This can’t help but sound tone-deaf at a time when the technology industry generates privacy scandals on a near-daily basis. Adobe says it’s helping create better customer experiences, so customers see ads and receive offers that are more interesting to them. It also says customers have ways to opt out of its targeting programs. But that’s making quite a leap, says Jen King, the director of consumer privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. “I would be shocked if the general public knew about this in any meaningful way,” King says. “This is the Oz behind the curtain.”"

Forget Photoshop. Adobe Is a Marketing Company Now | Bloomberg