A recent report from Adobe, “Adobe AI and Digital Trends in Content Creation and Management,” dives into these very pressures, especially concerning the intricacies of content supply chains—and I had the privilege of participating by lending my own expertise, noting that “High-quality content is more abundant than ever, spanning countless channels. The challenge of our time lies in managing and delivering it effectively. Success will hinge on mastering volume and variance, with brand standing as the ultimate differentiator.”

Mastering this balance of volume is an opportunity for brands to reimagine how they create, manage and deliver content. To help you envision what that could look like, we’ll examine some of Adobe’s findings below and showcase how we’ve helped brands tackle these complexities. 

Relevance isn’t optional—it’s expected.

One of the more eye-opening findings of Adobe’s research indicates that 71% of consumers consider it important or critical that brands anticipate their needs. Translation: relevance is everything. Consumers no longer just appreciate personalized, timely content—they expect it. My colleague Remco Vroom, Global EVP of Martech Platforms & Innovation, highlighted this shift in conversation with The Drum, noting that current AI innovation is largely shaped by these rising expectations: “Everything needs to be these fast, super niche experiences,” he said. “We’re getting all of these really great, faster-to-market, hyper-personalized services and we expect that from everything and everybody. So, companies need to redesign what their role is in in the whole value chain of products and services.”

To meet these evolving demands, delivering personalized content at scale is no longer optional—it’s the cornerstone of building lasting consumer relationships. A strong content supply chain is critical to achieving this agility. By leveraging tools like Adobe Firefly, we’ve been able to streamline workflows and create hyper-relevant content faster than ever before. Our work in this space was even highlighted in the keynote at the recent Adobe Summit, showcasing how we successfully leveraged Adobe Firefly to meet consumer expectations and deliver impactful results.

For instance, we used Adobe Firefly to generate 270 versions of a banner in a single day—a task that could have taken up to four weeks manually. The result? A 78% increase in click-through-rate, demonstrating how a well-optimized content supply chain not only meets consumer expectations but drives measurable impact. These efforts helped our client remain competitive in a world where attention spans are short and consumer expectations are higher than ever. 

Streamlined systems unlock scalability and impact.

In contrast to the point above, consumers say only a third of brands they interact with provide timely and relevant offers or communications, and only 45% of brands create a consistent experience across channels. So, how do you move in that direction? The key to building this framework lies not just in adopting AI tools, but in orchestration: strategically aligning talent, technology and creative processes across the entire content journey.

We believe orchestration is the linchpin of successful AI implementation for CX. In fact, it's a core tenet of our approach to modern marketing challenges. Monks.Flow—our AI-powered marketing platform that automates workflows, enabling scalable, efficient content production—is designed to enable transformative orchestration by consolidating fragmented processes and redefining the content supply chain, delivering full-funnel advertising that is faster, more relevant and more cost-efficient.

A prime example of this orchestration approach is our partnership with BMW Group. We served as BMW's creative and content orchestration partner, transforming their marketing by scaling relevant product marketing across 26 countries and in 29 languages. We streamlined BMW’s campaign processes from start to finish, consolidating 126 agencies into a single partnership. 

As part of this process, we implemented brand models and custom AI pipelines to deliver content at scale. This included Atomic Assets, an automated image production solution, to provide BMW with unlimited asset combinations for all car models and markets. This system leveraged automation and AI to enable BMW market teams to easily order customized assets and receive new visual assets within a 24-hour turnaround. And of course, it allows us to build creative that otherwise wouldn’t be possible, like bringing virtual influencer Lil Miquela into the real world.

Ultimately, building an effective AI-powered CX framework requires a shift towards this orchestrated approach, creating a unified and intelligent system that enhances customer interactions and drives transformative business impact.

Overcome ethical barriers to scale AI.

A key obstacle to AI innovation mentioned in the report is ethics: about half of the executives surveyed in Adobe’s research cite ethical concerns and brand reputation as barriers to scaling AI. This is a valid concern, because while many want to be fast and first with AI, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your brand, your people or your audience. We've navigated these worries with brands, understanding that ethical considerations are paramount in developing and deploying AI-driven solutions with confidence.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Dove’s iconic Real Beauty campaign—celebrated for challenging traditional beauty standards and championing inclusivity—we partnered with Dove to launch the Dove Code. In an effort to refresh its message for a new era, Dove sought to address biases amplified by AI. To support this mission, we developed an AI prompting playbook designed to help the industry confront biases inherent in generative AI outputs. This playbook provides a framework for embedding ethically grounded principles into generative AI workflows, ensuring that creativity and inclusivity remain at the forefront of industry innovation.

Furthermore, it's crucial to look ahead at emerging AI trends and address potential ethical considerations proactively. Our recent Labs Report on agentic AI, for example, decodes the hype around this technology and provides a transparent view of both its benefits and potential risks. As the capabilities of AI expand, it becomes increasingly important for brands to have partners who can guide them through these complexities. We believe in being transparent about potential risks and working collaboratively to develop mitigation strategies.

Mastering volume, variance and relevance is within your reach.

The demand for personalized, relevant, and timely content is reshaping the way brands approach their content supply chains. To thrive in this golden era of content means mastering both volume and variance while delivering experiences that resonate deeply with consumers. Whether it’s leveraging tools like Adobe Firefly to generate hyper-relevant content at scale or implementing orchestrated workflows as seen in our partnership with BMW Group, the key lies in aligning talent, technology and strategy to create meaningful, efficient, and impactful content.

A new partnership that enables wide, holistic views of client data.

One of the primary challenges in implementing a customer data platform is data readiness. Many businesses struggle with fragmented data sources, messy pipelines and the difficulty of extracting actionable insights. Monks helps clients overcome these challenges by offering a structured approach to integrate, harmonize and analyze data efficiently. 

With this new partnership, our team of data architects, analysts and engineers will work to integrate the entire data supply chain, breaking down these silos and enabling a wider, more holistic view of our client’s data. Once data readiness and wide data are achieved, the Hightouch Composable platform can be applied to activate their library of pre-built integrations and start to deliver AI-powered personalized experiences.

“Our team of data architects, analysts and engineers offer services to solve this problem. Monks will work to integrate the entire data supply chain, breaking down these silos and enabling a wider, more holistic view of our client’s data,” explains Jakub Otrząsek, SVP, Data, APAC at Monks. 

“Once data readiness and wide data are achieved, the Hightouch Composable platform can be applied to activate with their library of pre-built integrations and start to deliver AI-powered personalized experiences,” he adds.

Understanding the increasingly prominent role of composable CDPs.

A composable martech stack represents a significant shift in how organizations manage their marketing technology. By leveraging a best-of-breed approach and centering the architecture around a cloud data warehouse, businesses can create a single source of truth for customer data. This unified approach not only streamlines the deployment of existing advanced machine learning models but also fosters a modular and adaptable technology ecosystem that can readily evolve to accommodate changing business requirements.

The rapid adoption of composable CDPs within the industry underscores the numerous advantages they offer. Their cost-effectiveness, ease of deployment, and ability to leverage existing technology and intellectual property make them an attractive solution for businesses seeking to optimize their marketing technology stack. As the industry continues to evolve, composable CDPs are poised to play an increasingly prominent role in shaping the future of marketing technology.

Why data activation means value realisation.

First-party customer data is critical for organizations because it enables them to build trust through genuine interactions and scale personalization using AI. By activating first-party data with the Monks and Hightouch partnership, businesses can make a profound impact on marketing ROI.

Monks and Hightouch help businesses achieve this by:

• Enabling highly personalized, scalable marketing strategies through seamless integration of first-party data with media sources.
• Optimizing marketing spend by analyzing campaign performance in real-time
• Identifying high-performing content and reallocating resources for maximum ROI

The partnership allows for smarter and faster decisions based on valuable insights extracted from first-party data, moving businesses “beyond data chaos into clarity.” Monks helps brands build trust through authentic interactions while leveraging AI and first-party data to scale personalization.

A perfect moment for a partnership.

For Hightouch, this represents a pivotal moment. The widespread adoption of cloud data warehouses, the wave of interest in the composable CDP approach and the immediate success of the AI Decisioning launch marks a significant turning point for the Hightouch. This confluence of factors propels Hightouch into a substantial growth phase, positioning the company at the forefront of the evolving marketing technology landscape.

“Enterprises in the APAC region are setting the global pace in adopting composable CDP and AI agents for marketing,” said Kashish Gupta, CEO of Hightouch. “Monks is the ideal partner to help Hightouch support the rapid deployment of these technologies in the region.”

Meanwhile, we have recently simplified our teams into the two pillars of Marketing and Technology Services. This simplification of our business means we are more integrated than ever, aligning our strategic team leads with our clients, and able to bring expertise and talent across the full spectrum of Marketing and Technology Service as our client’s requirements change.

The Hightouch platform also perfectly aligns with our recent launch of the Data Decisioning framework.

Let's talk data and AI.

We invite businesses to discover how our partnership with Hightouch can revolutionize their data strategies. Whether the goal is to streamline analytics, improve marketing performance, or activate your customer data, we’re here to help.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards celebrate standout contributions in a rapidly evolving field, highlighting organizations and solutions that leverage AI to create meaningful impact. This marks the second consecutive year that Monks has been recognized by the Business Intelligence Group for our AI expertise—be sure to check out last year’s announcement here—so I’d like to take this opportunity to share what’s changed in the past twelve months.

Driving innovation and solving challenges in scale, quality and ethics.

Last year, we launched Monks.Flow, a powerful platform that combines AI-powered tools, automation and seamless workflows to optimize every step of the campaign-building process. By integrating these capabilities, Monks.Flow empowers brands to scale campaigns, improve efficiency and reduce costs—all while maintaining creative excellence. Since its launch, Monks.Flow has addressed some of the most significant challenges in marketing operations, redefining how brands manage complexity, scale and ethics in their campaigns.

One of the more recent challenges we’ve worked through is scaling quality assurance (QA) processes to match high-volume content production. While producing hundreds of creative assets is easily achievable with AI, manually checking them for consistency and brand compliance is not. To solve this, we developed a powerful AI-driven QA tool within Monks.Flow that automates real-time checks for precision, compliance and consistency. By reducing inefficiencies and eliminating human error, this innovation has set a new standard for speed and accuracy in asset production.

But our efforts aren’t limited to Monks.Flow and its development; we’ve also helped brands overcome broader AI concerns, like its ethical use. A prime example of this is our collaboration with Dove on the Real Beauty Prompt Playbook, launched as part of the 20th-anniversary celebration of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. This first-of-its-kind public resource was designed to address ingrained biases in AI’s depiction of beauty. With techniques for inclusive prompting and a glossary of equitable vocabulary, the Playbook equips creators to redefine beauty standards in AI-generated content. By steering AI in a more inclusive direction, we’re helping brands like Dove foster representation and authenticity in their creative work.

Building at the forefront of AI through strategic partnerships.

Beyond solving key challenges for our clients, we’ve also spent the past year strengthening our position at the forefront of AI through transformative partnerships with some of the most innovative companies in the industry. These collaborations have allowed us to push boundaries, deliver practical solutions and empower brands to excel in an AI-driven world.

We recently made moves with NVIDIA in pursuit of these goals. Announced at NVIDIA’s recent GTC conference, we introduced the Monks Foundry, a dedicated team of engineers focused on developing and deploying custom generative AI models tailored to enterprise data and domain-specific knowledge. These models are designed to meet the unique needs of each organization, enabling them to harness AI as a bespoke solution aligned with their goals and challenges. Supporting this work is the Monks Agentic Advisory, a 50-person consulting team that collaborates with the Foundry to provide insights and cutting-edge solutions. Together, these teams are setting new standards for innovation in generative AI.

This partnership is further strengthened through deep integrations with NVIDIA’s ecosystem. Monks.Flow now connects seamlessly with platforms like NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA NIM, and NVIDIA Blueprints, enabling advanced agentic AI workflows. These integrations allow brands to streamline operations, accelerate production timelines and scale their content creation capabilities with precision and speed—ensuring they stay competitive in an ever-changing landscape. 

In parallel, our partnership with Adobe underscores a shared commitment to revolutionizing the content supply chain for modern marketers. At the center of this collaboration is the launch of the Brand Model Practice, which combines Adobe’s GenStudio—a generative AI-first solution—with Monks.Flow. Together, these tools enable the creation of generative AI brand models: tailored systems that help marketers plan, create, manage, activate and measure on-brand content with speed and precision.

This partnership has already earned recognition, with Media.Monks being named runner-up for the Adobe Firefly Partner Award, an accolade that celebrates the most innovative applications of Adobe’s generative AI technologies. 

Partnering to push the boundaries of AI-powered creativity.

Winning the "case race" in today’s fast-paced marketing landscape requires more than just keeping up—it’s about staying ahead by leveraging the best tools and technologies. Through our collaborations with industry leaders like Google and Meta, we’ve not only delivered breakthrough results for brands but also helped push the boundaries of what their AI solutions can achieve. These partnerships have allowed us to explore the full potential of their platforms, driving innovation and showcasing what’s possible when AI meets creativity.

For Forever 21, operating in a fast-paced, trend-driven space, our challenge was to produce high volumes of lifestyle ad imagery to fuel growth. Using Monks.Flow, we combined existing photography with AI-generated seasonal backgrounds and text overlays, creating hundreds of ad variations tailored for Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns. This streamlined approach not only reduced production time but also optimized delivery using Meta’s AI-powered algorithms, resulting in improved conversion rates, higher average order values and validated ROI.

Similarly, Hatch, a wellness brand known for its Restore smart sleep assistant, faced growing pressure to deliver fit-for-format content across platforms like YouTube and Meta-owned channels. By combining our creative expertise with Google’s Gemini, we developed high-performing videos and dynamic animations that doubled their click-through rates and reduced acquisition costs. These AI-powered workflows helped Hatch scale their output while maintaining authenticity, easing the burden on their creative teams—and were highlighted by David Wadhwani, President of Digital Media at Adobe, during the Adobe Summit keynote as an example of how agencies are helping brands create more effective content.

Shaping what’s next in AI-driven solutions.

As we celebrate these two AI Excellence Awards, it's amazing to see how far we’ve come in the past year. From launching innovative solutions like Monks.Flow to forging transformative partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA, Adobe, Google and Meta, we’ve consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. These efforts not only solve complex challenges for our clients but also help shape the future of marketing by redefining creativity, efficiency and scalability through AI-driven solutions.

Looking ahead, we remain committed to staying at the cutting edge of AI innovation and focused on delivering impactful, measurable results for brands worldwide. Watch this space—who knows what we can accomplish together in the next year.

Let’s look at how Adobe GenStudio redefines performance marketing.

Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing is designed around the needs of performance marketers, whose roles often require scaling content creation and delivery. For larger organizations with well-established marketing teams, this solution can support tactical initiatives or even serve as a foundation for dedicated performance marketing groups. For corporate-level organizations with smaller marketing budgets, it offers a way to enable more in-house services, driving greater agility and efficiency.

Adobe has likewise recognized the critical role agencies play in helping organizations navigate the creative space. Teams like ours are uniquely positioned to support clients in two vital ways: first, by implementing tools and adapting business processes to harness the potential of generative AI; and second, by ensuring strong alignment with organizational and regulatory frameworks. As the GenAI landscape is evolving so quickly, the implementation of these frameworks needs to be revisited frequently.

GenStudio for Performance Marketing puts powerful features at marketers’ fingertips.

Looking at the tool, I was keen to understand where it fits into the existing Adobe GenStudio and Content Supply Chain toolset. The existing toolset (with applications such as Adobe Workfront, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Experience Manager Assets) provides a comprehensive, scalable, end-to-end solution for any business. With GenStudio for Performance Marketing, Adobe brings together key features across all these solutions to support performance marketing teams create content within the context of its content supply chain workflows.

The main menu of GenStudio for Performance Marketing is divided into two sections: one for actions and utilities, which the Performance Marketer can use to create and measure outbound content, and another for shared resources, including brands, personas and products. There are currently two roles, marketer and system manager, although I expect these to become more granular before release. The marketer creates outbound content and can review its performance, while the system manager can configure the shared resources such as brands, products, and personas and approve content for publication.

The setup of the shared resources provides critical guardrails for AI-generated content. A System Manager can drag and drop their existing approved organizational brand guidelines into the interface. The system will detect from the document key information including tone of voice, brand values and other guidelines. These can also be edited manually. Similarly, personas or brands can be created manually or by upload. Currently there is no mechanism to connect to a PIM or data file for a list of products.

A marketer can create content from a template, similar to creation in Adobe Experience Manager. When a user creates content, they are presented with options to select a brand, persona and product. Additionally, they can select an image from the asset library and enter a prompt that will be used to generate the content. The system will then generate four versions of the content. Each version is individually scored for compliance to the brand guidelines and can be edited or regenerated. A marketer can then select one or more for approval for publication or export. This supports a case where multiple versions may be delivered for A/B testing.

The asset library simplifies content reuse by saving variations for future campaigns, making it easier to manage and organize creative assets. Assets can be assigned directly to campaigns, streamlining the process for marketers. While template configuration currently relies on HTML, the tool makes it easy to scale and customize content for different needs.

Future updates will further enhance GenStudio for Performance Marketing’s impact.

Adobe Firefly integration for asset generation is expected in upcoming updates, further expanding creative possibilities. Unlike other generative AI options on the market, Firefly is purpose-built for enterprise use. It offers commercial safety and provides precise controls to ensure training data is accurate and responsibly sourced, making it a standout choice for businesses.

The activation mechanism is not yet enabled in the current release. Still, the product documentation suggests that publishing to existing Adobe products will be supported, as will a generic CSV export. Adobe has also announced activation partners including Google’s Campaign Manager 360, Meta, Microsoft Advertising, Snap and TikTok.
 

The real power of the solution will come by providing data and to marketers on the performance of their content—for example, tracking impressions, click-throughs and the ROI of each—enabling them to make decisions in real time. The current release allows connection to Meta, but future connections to the Google Marketing Platform, TikTok, and Adobe platforms will give the marketer real-time insights into campaign and content performance. This would also be a great candidate for automation so that the marketer can define boundaries to change or publish, such as the ability to push winners via Auto-Allocation in Adobe Target.

Adobe has embraced interoperability in all its enterprise platforms, and GenStudio for Performance Marketing is no exception. In my ideal world, customers and partners could then build their own interfaces for publishing and insights. If these extensions can be made available on Adobe Exchange, the power and leverage of the platform will grow very quickly. Additionally, I feel there are options for external tools to integrate and extend, such as a wider generative integration or finely grained workflows such as those provided by our own solution Monks.Flow.

Final thoughts.

Overall, GenStudio for Performance Marketing embodies a genuine shift in Marketing Operations. It is built with the user and organization in mind and matches the modern-day enterprise's goals. It is still early, and the gen AI platform will evolve quickly, but it is refreshing to see Adobe's investment prepared for the next stage in the GenAI journey.