Adobe bolsters Marketing Cloud, launches core services, iBeacon support

Adobe on Tuesday rolled out a series of services for its Marketing Cloud that stitch together audience profiles, advertising mix planning and content management tools across mobile and Web channels. The company also rolled out support for Apple's iBeacon technology.

The moves, announced at Adobe's digital marketing conference in Salt Lake City, bolster the software company's marketing cloud. Enterprise software companies have been gobbling up cloud marketing vendors and stitching together suites. Adobe, however, began lumping creative content, analytics and other tools ahead of the acquisition spree.

For instance, Oracle recently bought BlueKai as a data management platform and plans to combine it with Responsys and Eloqua, two other marketing software outfits that were acquired. Adobe bought Demdex, a data management platform, in 2011.

Now Adobe can't stand still because it is competing against enterprise software vendors---Oracle and IBM to name a few---that are giants compared to the company. That need to stay nimble and keep advancing the marketing ball puts some color on Adobe's move to support Apple's iBeacon, which adds location data in areas such as stores, stadiums and other venues.

Marketers aren't exactly running toward large scale iBeacon use, but are beginning to experiment with local promotions based on where a customer is, time spent in an area and other data. Ray Pun, senior product marketing manager of mobile Adobe, said Apple just released the specification for iBeacon, but stadiums and stores are likely to use proximity marketing technology soon.

"The millennial audience is used to receiving a lot of messaging so marketers can enhance the shopping experience and get more analytics," said Pun.

Among Adobe's key services across its marketing cloud:

A master profile, which provides a single customer profile among all marketing channels and include third party system integration and behavioral data. The idea behind the master profile is that marketers can provide more personalized ads with contextual data.

Shared assets across Adobe's Marketing Cloud. In a nutshell, the connection with Creative Cloud will make it easier to create content and distributed it across channels.

Marketing mix planning that gives marketers the ability to see offline and online ads across television, print, public relations, events and search, display, email and social channels.

Mobile app development tools to deliver personalized apps and ad messages. What's most notable about Adobe's mobile app development platform is that it gives marketers and developers an avenue to create content and distribute it.

The release of Adobe Experience Manager that simplifies asset delivery across apps, communities, sites and interactive forms.

Adobe Target Premium, which provides automated campaign management as well as cross-sell recommendations. Target Premium's aim is to automate decisions and scale personalization based on algorithms.