Editorial
Who's in this video?
CMSWire's Michelle Hawley catches up here with Greg Boone, CMSWire Contributor and board member for Aplyca, on what they expect at Adobe Summit and other digital experience trends.
The Gist
- Adobe Summit 2025 set for March 17-20. Digital customer experience leaders prepare for the annual event in Las Vegas, where Adobe will spotlight AI, personalization and composable architectures.
- Generative AI and personalization at scale. Adobe is expected to showcase how AI-driven tools can tailor customer experiences in real-time, expanding Firefly to audio, video, and 3D.
- AI-enhanced Adobe Experience Manager. Expect deeper AI integration in AEM, with a focus on content engagement, traffic acquisition and conversion optimization.
- Composable architectures under pressure. With new entrants like Builder.io and Contentful expanding their DXP capabilities, Adobe may address industry demand for modularity.
Digital customer experience leaders are preparing for Adobe Summit 2025, scheduled for March 17-20 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Adobe, a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms that fell behind Optimizely this year, faces changes in the landscape from existing competitors as well as emerging providers evolving beyond headless CMS into full-scale digital experience platforms.
Taking a look at the session structure indicates Adobe’s strategic priorities, highlighting a focus on generative AI, customer journey management and advanced data-driven personalization. The emphasis placed on these tracks signals where Adobe expects marketers and digital leaders to concentrate their efforts in the coming year.
Adobe's digital experience business is growing, btw. In financial results reported March 12, Adobe's digital experience business segment revenue was $1.41 billion, representing 10% year-over-year growth as reported and in constant currency. Stock-wise, it hasn't been the best year for Adobe.
Table of Contents
- Generative AI Powering Personalization at Scale
- AEM Incorporating Generative AI and Real-Time Personalization
- Composable Architectures and Modular Adoption
- AI Integration Across Customer Journeys
- Conclusion: Headed to Adobe Summit? Hit Us Up
Generative AI Powering Personalization at Scale
A common theme will be generative AI and personalization at scale. We expect to see how how generative AI can tailor experiences for millions of customers in real time. There is a whole generative AI track to help businesses “leverage AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences, drive efficiency, and prove measurable impact."
Adobe was heavily invested in AI announcements last year. In many cases, it showed promise and possibilities ranging from production ready tools to mockups in the case of GenAI Studio. We expect Adobe's GenAI offering to be expanded and solidified across the board.
Adobe has also hinted at expanding Firefly to support audio, video and 3D content generation; we expect to see announcements in this front.
Related Article: Adobe's Big Bet on Generative AI Takes Center Stage at Summit
AEM Incorporating Generative AI and Real-Time Personalization
Adobe Experience Manager, its core content management system, was hardly mentioned in last year's Summit. While generative AI has been added for the first stage in content creation (image generation, summarization, changing tone, assisting with report generation), we may look forward to see it go deeper into topics such as traffic acquisition, improving engagement and facilitating conversion.
After last year’s event, I got the sense Adobe must be working on something bigger to improve its flagship CMS with major AI-powered capabilities.
Expect to see AEM's Edge Delivery Service (EDS), referred to as Helix or Franklin – Document Based Publishing approach focused on simplicity and content delivery speed. We are now seeing real-world adoption of AEM’s EDS and some industry-leading performance metrics shared by Adobe.
Composable Architectures and Modular Adoption
While other vendors are focusing on the composability message heavily, as reported by CMSWire on the Ibexa Summit 2025, it will be interesting to see if there will be major changes to Adobe's offering around a more modular and composable approach to deploy capabilities for existing and new customers.
The industry pressure is there for a more composable architecture allowing products to be integrated together through an API-driven architecture and a more lightweight approach. This year marked new entrants to the Gartner DXP Magic Quarant include Builder.io, Contentful, Contentstack, Pimcore and Uniform Systems.
Additional pressure to the CMS component comes from new players in the field as seen in 2025 Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and CMSWire's DXP Market Guide. Builder.io adds a design-to-code approach simplifying development and while Contentful and Contentstck are adding CDP, testing and personalization capabilities from their headless CMS roots.
Related Article: Composable Architecture: Building Your Roadmap to Success
AI Integration Across Customer Journeys
Adobe continues to lead in integrating AI deeply into customer journeys. This year will showcase AI-driven journey orchestration and advanced marketing automation through solutions like Adobe Journey Optimizer and Marketo Engage.
These tools allow businesses to deliver hyper-personalized, contextually relevant interactions in real-time, driving engagement across all digital channels seamlessly.
From Innovation to Adoption at Scale
A significant shift this year is seeing organizations adopt capabilities that were previously cutting-edge innovations. Practical use cases and demonstrations from enterprises successfully implementing last year's trends underscore the real-world maturity of Adobe's platforms. Expect detailed case studies highlighting measurable impacts and lessons learned from widespread adoption.
Adobe's Unified Pricing Metric
After announcing a Unified Pricing Metric for certain cases in 2023 aimed at simplifying pricing across the portfolio we are looking forward to how this will be rolled out in 2025 for all customers and expanded across more products.
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Conclusion: Headed to Adobe Summit? Hit Us Up
CMSWire — and sister site VKTR — has teamed with my company Aplyca on a content partnership covering Adobe Summit through video and other interviews. Expect CMSWire to bring coverage on key announcements and insights from practitioners.
I know I'll be preparing for the trip to Vegas with water bottles, comfortable shoes and layered clothing for arctic-level air conditioning. Are you going to Adobe Summit? Connect with me and CMSWire for some dialogue to set the tone for digital customer experience innovation in 2025.
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