Held in early November, Advertising Week offers a preview of the ideas and themes set to drive the industry’s agenda in the year ahead. Whether you missed it or just want the highlights, here are the trends poised to shape the road to 2025.

We’re entering a new era for creators and brand ambassadors.

If you attended Advertising Week at the Papalote Museo del Niño in Mexico City on November 5–7, you probably noticed the prominent role of content creators across multiple panels. Judging by how quickly these rooms filled up, these sessions captured special interest, highlighting the growing value brands and marketers place on creators. We are in an era where connecting authentically, relevantly, and in real-time with audiences is not just desirable but essential—and that is redefining the relationship between brands and creators.

“The importance of creators lies in their deep connection with the audience,” says Alejandra Chiang, Account Director at Monks. “When communities trust a creator, and that creator partners with a brand that shares their values, the metrics always reflect that synergy.” But gone are the days when a promotional post was enough. Today, forging genuine connections requires actively engaging in dialogue with audiences and moving in tune with culture.

Expectations are rising while attention spans are shrinking. For brands and creators alike, the secret to thriving in this environment is delivering genuine value to audiences. A case in point: in a campaign for Sinuberase, a probiotic treatment by Opella, we collaborated with a diverse set of creators, including Mexican influencer Arturo Lemmen. The key to success was giving each creator creative freedom to generate content that genuinely interests their audience, allowing for a deeper connection with the product.

The power of data and large-scale personalization.

Creating value for consumers is essential, but it’s also easier said than done. It all starts with a deep understanding of the audience, requiring brands to prioritize data analysis to unlock consumer insights—and sometimes uncover surprising behaviors.

“Consumers don’t always use platforms for their intended purposes, which requires constant data analysis to adjust strategies,” says our Group Creative Director, Camilo Monsalve. A standout example shared during one panel came from the ecommerce giant Mercado Libre, where some users treat the platform as a search engine rather than a shopping destination. 

Similarly, Heineken discovered its content resonates not just with its customers but also with non-beer drinkers. This is largely because the brand skillfully taps into major cultural moments, creating content that connects with people through shared passions and meaningful experiences. “What matters most is recognizing these behaviors, seizing opportunities around music festivals, sports events, or culinary experiences, and engaging with people’s interests beyond just the product,” explains Monsalve.

Efficient data management also helps brands elevate personalization to new heights. “Rather than focusing on a narrow niche, data allows us to segment and customize messages for diverse groups with greater precision,” explains Andreia Tavares, VP, Head of Social, LATAM. “This enables sharper communication across segments, maximizing the impact for both brands and their portfolios.”

In today’s landscape, where a brand’s relevance depends on staying in constant dialogue with its audience, the combination of creativity and data is essential. “We have to operate in real time, moving at the same speed as consumers, to ensure brands remain relevant,” says Tavares.

AI enhances engagement and creativity.

It’s impossible to discuss real-time interaction without considering the impact of artificial intelligence. During Advertising Week, it became clear that AI not only improves how marketers present and sell ideas—whether to clients or within their own organizations—but also expands team capabilities. “AI enables smaller teams to offer full-scale services without becoming overwhelmed by tasks they can’t fully manage,” explains Chiang. Success isn’t about team size but about striking the right balance between creative talent and technology.

Part of achieving that balance is realizing it goes beyond just automating tasks to gain speed and efficiency at a lower cost. The real shift lies in using AI to foster deeper connections—restoring a sense of humanity in interactions between brands and people and reimagining what’s possible in that relationship. AI helps ensure the right message reaches the right audience on the right channel.

This combination of technology, data, personalization, and empathy will define leading brands by 2025 and beyond. Audiences increasingly value authentic and personalized connections, and brands must not only adapt to cultural changes in real-time but also actively participate in the creation of culture. A significant year lies ahead for those who manage to find the balance between creativity and technological precision while engaging in ongoing dialogue with their audiences.

Working with brands like Chime who have sophisticated multi-channel advertising programs, my colleagues have unlocked benefits ranging from enhanced automation to scalable personalization, all while driving cost efficiency. This topic took center stage during a panel discussion at Campaign’s AI Deciphered 2024, featuring Brayden Varr, ACD at Chime; Ashwini Karandikar, EVP of Media, Technology, and Data at The 4A’s; Jesse Waldele, and SVP of Digital Operations and Client Success at Dow Jones; along with myself.

Steve Barrett, our moderator and VP and editorial director at PRWeek & Campaign US, opened the panel discussion with a pivotal question: What do the new AI-powered tools mean for the role of a media planner? Below are some key insights from our session.

Creative and media are becoming closer together.

Historically, creative and media roles operated in silos, each adhering to their own set of responsibilities. This setup is far from ideal, because the intersection of creativity and performance analysis is crucial for brands to succeed. As Karandikar put it, "The creative arm needs to speak the language of performance while still capturing the brand message.” However, reaching a point where team members could put aside their production tasks to collaborate with others was, at the very least, challenging.

Now, with AI managing repetitive tasks and various aspects of content generation, creatives can concentrate on higher-level strategic thinking and innovation. As a result, they can collaborate more effectively with media planners—and vice versa—gaining deeper insights into target demographics and enhancing campaign optimization. Plus, it opens up new possibilities for media planners who may not have the support of creatives on their teams.

Varr, approaching the topic from the creative and design side, highlighted how performance marketers are leveraging AI tools to enhance creativity on limited budgets. “If you work in the performance space, you probably have zero creative production budget,” he said. “But we have to get noticed. With tools like Adobe and Midjourney, we can create content that helps us stand out in these feeds more than ever, and it’s positively impacting our key metrics that we evaluate every day.”

What’s more, in highly regulated markets, brands often face restrictions that prevent them from using demographic data, such as age, gender, or location, to target consumers. Instead, they can rely instead on creative content as a key input. That means exploring various attributes—such as interests, behaviors, or emotional triggers—within the creative itself to connect with consumers. Media buyers are increasingly collaborating with creative teams, brand strategists and media strategists to craft campaigns that resonate with target audiences. 

It’s not just about automation; it’s about intelligence.

As mentioned earlier, automation allows creatives and media planners to focus on high-value tasks rather than routine analytics. But it doesn’t end there. Gen AI excels at processing vast datasets to reveal patterns and trends that human analysts may miss. By generating actionable insights, generative AI helps inform media strategies, allowing planners to optimize their approaches based on real-time data rather than relying solely on historical experiences.

Waldele said, “Where we really see a huge opportunity is not just in media plan automation, but in media plan intelligence. We can create media plans that are performing and infused with that intelligence.” To provide an example, working with enterprise clients with complex media programs, we can automatically tag thousands of potential attributes within our creatives. This used to be a cumbersome task that required building complex taxonomies to capture various elements of an ad. Marketers had to create detailed tags for simple attributes like “red background” or “blue background,” while also specifying the product’s context. This method imposed limits on the number of characters allowed in an ad name and often left teams struggling to log every attribute of the creative that could impact performance.

Now, the automatic tagging capability streamlines the process and enhances the depth of analysis. AI can pick up subtle details that were previously imperceptible to the human eye—such as whether a card is positioned at the top of a phone or next to it—and understand how these elements resonate with audiences. Moreover, many ad platforms integrate generative AI to dynamically alter creatives in response to immediate audience feedback. It’s a significant leap forward—not just in terms of efficiency, but in the depth of intelligence that drives media planning today.

There’s value in taking risks.

From highly personalized creative content to real-time insights, brands have much to gain by incorporating generative AI into their media strategies. Still, many find themselves caught up in the challenges, risks and considerations. As Varr said, it’s easy to say no to these tools, but doing so can be costly. Once your competitors start effectively harnessing the untapped potential of generative AI, catching up becomes a formidable challenge.

While smaller brands tend to be more agile and willing to take risks, established enterprises have just as much—if not more—to gain from embracing innovation. To secure your team’s buy-in, Varr suggests, “Find someone who believes in it, and then demonstrate the impact. If you can do that, that’s when you’ll succeed.”

We are entering a new era of collaboration, agility and intelligence. By breaking down traditional silos and fostering collaboration among creative, media, and strategic teams, organizations can leverage the full potential of their insights and automate routine tasks. This empowerment not only enhances creative quality and campaign effectiveness but also positions brands to respond swiftly to market dynamics. In a time when agility and informed decision-making are crucial, those embracing generative AI will not only stay ahead of the competition but also redefine what's possible in media planning and execution.

As you sit before him, Sir Martian notices you through a camera. He begins to chat, and his questions are thoughtful. As you respond, his voice recognition system kicks in, clearly detecting and responding to what you say. Each answer you give provides context to the world you live in, allowing him to decide where to draw you. An idea generated in his “head” then moves to the brushless motors in his “hand” as he deftly captures your likeness on paper. An idea generated in his “head” then moves to the brushless motors in his “hand” as he deftly captures your likeness on paper. With every stroke of his pen, your portrait comes to life, a personalized masterpiece forged from a conversation that you’re sure not to forget. In this fusion of art and technology, Sir Martian provides more than just a portrait. He offers a connection, a shared moment, perfectly tailored to you. But don’t take my word for it; watch as Sir Martian introduces himself:

Sir Martian combines several innovative technologies.

Humanoid robots are becoming increasingly significant in the robotics industry. According to Market.us, the Global Humanoid Robot Market is projected to grow from USD 1.49 billion in 2023 to USD 29.12 billion by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 62% from 2024 to 2033. This highlights a substantial push towards robotics and humanoids, underscoring their potential in various applications.

While the potential of humanoid technology is vast, I realize that an animatronic like Sir Martian may not be the most accessible starting point for digitally-driven organizations. However, the true value of Sir Martian lies in showcasing the convergence of multiple innovations in AI, each contributing uniquely to enhanced user experiences. Before diving into those technologies, let me guide you through the components that together bring our extraterrestrial friend to life.

Sir Martian is powered by cutting-edge technology, making use of 14 brushless motors strategically placed throughout its body—six in the head, three in the chest, three in the right arm, and two in the left arm—to enable deceptively lifelike movements. These motors are far quieter than ones that do use brushes, while dual encoders ensure precise control over movement and speed. Together, these technologies create an inviting atmosphere where engaging conversations and artistic expression unfold undeterred by the whirs of gears and joints you would expect from a robot.

At the heart of Sir Martian’s intelligence is a sophisticated system of large language model (LLM) powered agents, each designed to handle a specific task. This multi-sensory approach integrates text processing, visual interpretation, conversation, and artistic creation seamlessly. One LLM agent processes visual input from the camera, generating prompts that describe what Sir Martian sees, while another LLM agent handles user input (speech converted to text), enabling Sir Martian to understand what people say and to reply appropriately.

To keep the conversation meaningful, a third LLM agent acts as a self-moderator, guiding the dialogue along a defined path to ensure it remains relevant and informative. For example, if Sir Martian asks the user about a hobby or interest of theirs but receives an unrelated answer, he will recognize the need to reiterate the question to get the information he needs. While not explicitly scripted, these built-in guardrails ensure that every conversation follows a similar structure while still adapting to each user's unique responses, ultimately ending in the reveal of the personalized portrait.

Sir Martian inspires a wide range of AI-powered user experiences.

When blended together, these technologies create an incredible artistic experience. But each of those building blocks inspire my creative side to envision a wide range of other interactive, personalized experiences that similarly draw upon brand voice, a knowledge base and user data to surprise and delight audiences.

Scaled conversations: Imagine inviting your favorite personality—whether it’s a content creator, a celebrity or even a fictional character—into your friends’ group chat. Powered by AI, this digital double can participate in the banter among multiple users within a single conversation in real time. This is an experience we were able to build for an athletic brand that sought to revitalize the second-screen experience for sports fans, allowing viewers to invite an AI-powered version of a popular sportscaster who reacted to a live game alongside fans. The experience exchanged over 44,000 messages in ten seconds.

Immersive experiences: Our work with Spotify featuring The Weeknd is similar in giving fans the chance to chat with one of their idols, although in a drastically different experience and context. “Alone With Me” is a personalized web experience where users meet face-to-face with an interactive deepfake of the artist, who draws on their Spotify listening data to discuss their taste in music. In addition to its impressively realistic recreation of The Weeknd’s look and mannerisms, the experience also uses AI for voice synthesis—making a conversation with the artist The Weeknd almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

Content generation: AI experiences don't always require complexity to captivate. Our collaboration with Hatch, a sleep wellness company, exemplifies how personalized visual creatives can engage diverse audiences efficiently. By leveraging AI, we developed targeted ad assets for Hatch's Restore 2 product, tailoring each to distinct audience personas. This approach allowed us to craft immersive visual environments that resonated with individuals' lifestyles and preferences, optimizing engagement. Freed from the constraints of traditional photoshoots, generative AI enabled us to swiftly produce high-quality, personalized ads that not only aligned with Hatch's brand but also outperformed previous strategies, demonstrating AI's power in content personalization.

User agents: The standard AI experience today is conversational, but the near future will enable experiences in which automated agents will be able to accomplish tasks on your behalf. For example, while an AI-generated snippet on Google’s search results may help you plan a vacation, it isn’t yet able to book an itinerary for you. Sir Martian, by not only carrying a conversation but also physically drawing a user portrait, offers a glimpse into how AI agents can perform tasks for their users.

As we look towards more personalized experiences, virtual shopping assistants (VSAs) are emerging as a key tactic in transforming online retail. Tired of chatbots that fall flat or get lost in conversation trees? Imagine engaging with a VSA that understands your preferences and evolves with every interaction, creating a seamless shopping journey. For a deeper dive into how VSAs are revolutionizing customer experiences and enhancing brand engagement, check out our discussion on virtual shopping assistants.

AI’s promise: meaningful, human-machine connection and collaboration.

While these diverse AI experiences showcase the broad potential of technology to enhance user interaction, they all share a common thread of innovation and personalization that Sir Martian embodies. Each example, whether immersive, conversational, or task-oriented, points toward a future where AI not only complements human endeavors but elevates them through bespoke, interactive journeys unique to the brand and the needs of its customers.

As technology relentlessly advances, Sir Martian is a model of innovation, illustrating the seamless blend of AI and robotics to create a wholly unique user experience. Through his lifelike interactions and personalized artistic creations, Sir Martian exemplifies how technology can transcend traditional boundaries, offering more than mere utility. He is also a great antithesis to the perception that AI can only be used to drive efficiencies. In this case, he also represents potential revenue streams as he provides an intimate and tailored connection between machine and human. This animatronic marvel invites us to reimagine the possibilities within AI, showing that such technology can be meaningful, personable and deeply engaging.

Our journey with Adobe has been one of collaboration and growth as an Adobe Platinum Solution Partner. Earlier this year, we further strengthened this partnership by launching the Brand Model Practice, utilizing Adobe Firefly—a pioneering generative AI-first solution. This integration allows marketing teams to swiftly plan, create, manage, activate and measure on-brand content, all streamlined through our AI-first managed service, Monks.Flow. By enabling brands to fast-track their AI transformation, we optimize their entire content supply chain with generative AI capabilities.

Central to our recognition at Adobe Max is our work using Adobe Firefly, an innovative generative AI tool that seamlessly transforms text inputs into stunning visual content. By integrating Firefly into our workflows, we've unlocked new efficiencies and creative possibilities, empowering brands to craft compelling digital narratives with unparalleled speed and innovation. In celebration of being named a runner-up for the Adobe Firefly Partner Award for Best Creative, let’s delve deeper into how Firefly continues to revolutionize the way we deliver value to brands.

Adobe Firefly powers our ability to generate high-impact visual content for any brand.

One of the standout features we leverage is Adobe Firefly's text-to-image generation, which enables us to create compelling visuals for brands whose business models defy traditional imagery. For instance, we've utilized this technology to develop visual content for a financial services brand, whose services don’t naturally lend themselves to conventional visuals. By transforming text prompts into vivid imagery, we effectively convey unique brand narratives in engaging and innovative ways.

Adobe Firefly’s generative fill feature is another vital tool in our creative toolkit. It enables us to separate and expand image layers, a critical function for adapting designs across diverse digital channels. This seamless transformation into various aspect ratios and the addition of animations ensure that ads grab attention on social media feeds and display placements. As Hannah Terjanian, our Group Director of Performance Creative, explains, this feature is particularly valuable for brands aiming to create impactful, motion-rich assets.

But it’s the integration of Firefly into the Adobe Creative Cloud suite where the magic truly happens. By working within this ecosystem, our team can efficiently refine photo details according to brand guidelines and performance targets. The seamless accessibility of Firefly within tools like Photoshop and Illustrator means that our creatives can incorporate its capabilities without disrupting their workflow, fostering innovation and enabling us to deliver exceptional results quickly.

Enhance cross-functional collaboration by bridging creative and strategic disciplines.

By leveraging Adobe’s innovative tools, we’ve been able to unlock significant benefits for brands, particularly high-growth ones that face resource constraints. Many of these brands can't afford the cost of live image and video asset production, and stock imagery often fails to differentiate them from competitors. By utilizing Adobe Firefly and Monks.Flow, we can help these brands produce unique, on-brand imagery both affordably and swiftly, getting in-market within days rather than weeks.

An additional advantage is the ease of gaining buy-in from cross-functional stakeholders. Ad approvers, who may not be designers themselves, often struggle to visualize concepts without fully produced assets. Firefly enables us to create working versions of ads early in the process, offering concrete examples for stakeholders to engage with, thus preventing wasted resources and aligning team visions more effectively.

As Victoria Milo, our SVP of Global Media, Solutions & Emerging Technologies, told Campaign recently, “What AI is doing is forcing the disciplines to actually come together,” she added. “That is where we are getting maximum output for any of our clients.” These features from Firefly allow us to strengthen these cross-disciplinary teams.

Accelerated production cycles with Adobe Firefly drive creative innovation and efficiency.

Our use of Adobe's tools also significantly reduces the time lost to the revisions process. With tangible drafts in hand, rather than mere concepts, feedback can be addressed almost instantaneously. For instance, when a client requested the removal of a component from a seasonal campaign, Firefly facilitated rapid updates across all images in minutes. Utilizing Adobe Creative Production Solutions, we can transition from concept to approved design in less than half the typical revision time.

This accelerated production of mockups and finished designs also allows us to offer clients a broader array of creative options, fostering productive brainstorming sessions, rapid testing and improved performance. We’ve been able to unlock 96% faster versioning of banners to be used across channels and devices with the help of Firefly, while the Substance 3D collection has enabled us to build 3D assets 70% faster than before.

Finally, the enhanced feedback cycle benefits both clients and our teams. As Terjanian points out, “The entire team is that much more motivated to keep designing new iterations when we can see how our last designs impacted the client’s KPIs. This also benefits our clients because the feedback loop is more effective, ultimately improving their ROI.”

Achieve unmatched personalization and performance with high-volume assets.

Finally, all these tools have helped us solve the crucial challenge of building the volume of assets needed—often totaling more than 300—to get the most accurate insights and results out of platform algorithms, the subject of a session that I participated on at Adobe MAX this year. With Adobe Firefly, we empower brands to meet these demands efficiently, transforming what was once a costly challenge into a streamlined process—a process that has delivered impressive results like a 66% in return on ad spend and an 80% boost in click-through rates.

This capability is especially transformative for SMB's, enabling them to compete at a larger scale. By automating asset creation and adapting content across formats, we help brands personalize their approach while reducing costs, providing them with the agility to respond to market demands swiftly.

As an Adobe Platinum Partner, we drive creativity and innovation for brands in the AI era.

As we reflect on our journey with Adobe, being recognized as a runner-up for the Adobe Firefly Partner Award for Best Creative underscores the transformative power of our partnership. Adobe Firefly has not only revolutionized our creative processes but has also empowered our clients to achieve extraordinary results with agility and innovation. Our collaboration with Adobe allows us to offer cutting-edge solutions that are accessible to brands of all sizes, ensuring they stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Looking forward, we are excited to continue harnessing the potential of Adobe’s tools, driving creative excellence and innovation. By doing so, we remain committed to supporting our clients in crafting compelling narratives that resonate with their audiences, ultimately enhancing their brand impact and return on investment.

From cutting-edge AI solutions to enhanced cloud capabilities, Dreamforce 2024 showcased a vision where data-driven insights and intelligent automation lead the charge in boosting innovation and efficiency. So, let’s dive into the most exciting revelations from this year's event, highlighting how these advancements are set to empower businesses to reach new heights in building meaningful and enduring customer relationships.

Agentforce introduces intelligent agents across enterprise use cases.

One of the most exciting announcements at Dreamforce was the reveal of Agentforce, an autonomous agent platform that lets brands build AI agents that support their customers and employees. The idea is that when working together, humans and the AI agents who augment their abilities can drive customer success together.

These agents fulfill key, specialized roles that range from supporting marketers as they build campaigns and journeys to serving as a coach that helps employees practice their pitching. On the customer side, Agentforce can serve as a personal shopper who makes recommendations based on customer preferences, a sales development representative who engages leads on behalf of the sales team, or a service agent who can resolve cases in natural language. These agents are grounded in your data, ensuring accuracy as well as an experience that greatly surpasses standard chatbots that customers are used to.

At its core, Agentforce is a Salesforce innovation that answers the critical question of how to integrate AI into business operations. It goes beyond traditional chatbots by incorporating a higher level of intelligence, powered by your Data Cloud data, allowing it to complete repeatable tasks more effectively. Therefore, it’s essential that you have data foundations to support these intelligent actions.

Agentforce and our own Monks.Flow represent a dynamic duo of AI solutions that can significantly enhance how businesses interact with customers and manage internal processes. Together, these platforms exemplify how assistive AI technologies are crucial in helping brands scale their operations and elevate customer interactions. The synergy between Agentforce's customer-centric AI agents and Monks.Flow's operational efficiencies enables businesses to operate smarter and at a larger scale, without sacrificing personalization or effectiveness. Learn more about Agentforce in depth here.

Data Cloud puts even more insights at your fingertips with wider unstructured data support.

Speaking of Data Cloud, Salesforce announced a handful of new features to help make your data far more insightful than ever before. Perhaps the most exciting new feature is additional unstructured data support, including native processing of audio and video content.

This is transformative because it unlocks new data sources, providing a more complete understanding of customer preferences, pain points and behaviors by analyzing content like customer calls, webinars or product demos. By revealing nuanced insights into customer sentiment and intent, companies can enhance customer profiles and enable personalized, data-driven marketing strategies.

Moreover, applying AI to these sources allows for more accurate predictions of customer needs, improving customer service interactions and fostering loyalty. Once processed and searchable, this content becomes a valuable asset across business functions, enhancing operational efficiency and decision-making accuracy. For example, examining customer service chats can help support teams or sales reps identify frequent issues and improve response strategies, leading to increased customer satisfaction or higher conversion rates.

Find—and act on—information you need with enhanced search.

Despite so much data coming from so many sources, finding what you need will become a lot easier thanks to hybrid search. Hybrid search combines vector search with keyword search, bringing information together from across different media. These improved search capabilities enable faster information discovery by considering the customer's specific situation, preferences and history, thereby reducing the friction often encountered in traditional searches that rely solely on exact matches or keywords.

With personalized customer interactions, searches become more tailored to individual needs, allowing service representatives and sales teams to provide faster, more relevant responses, which enhances customer satisfaction. This leads to enhanced efficiency for teams, as quicker access to relevant customer data lets employees respond to inquiries more efficiently. As a result, customers enjoy an improved experience, receiving seamless, fast, and accurate service that effectively resolves issues or recommends products.

Additional governance and security features keep your data safe—including prevention of data leaks when using AI.

Security and governance have always been crucial to storing data, but the use of external AI applications have raised new concerns about eliminating data leaks and reducing risk. Salesforce has implemented additional data security and governance features to help keep your data safe, including the prevention of exposure to unauthorized parties when using AI. These enhancements are vital for compliance with regulations, as privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA are becoming more stringent.

Preserving customer trust is crucial, as customers expect their data to be managed securely and responsibly, and additional security measures reassure them that their data is protected. Moreover, these features mitigate risks associated with growth and innovation, providing a secure foundation for companies to expand operations and introduce new products or services without increasing vulnerabilities. You can find more details on added security, along with more info on all of the Data Cloud features discussed above, on Salesforce’s website.

Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition helps small and medium-sized businesses do more with less.

Switching focus to Marketing Cloud, Salesforce revealed Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, which we recently examined in depth. This edition is crafted to empower smaller marketing teams to achieve more with less, thanks to its innovative features that streamline AI-driven efficiencies, enhance user journey experimentation, and bolster cross-team collaboration. Notable additions include a reimagined campaign home, robust AI-powered tools like Einstein Engagement Scoring and Frequency, and advanced dynamic content creation. These tools are set to transform how marketers engage with customers by predicting user behaviors, optimizing messaging strategies, and personalizing interactions.

Moreover, Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition introduces event-driven messaging and two-way conversational capabilities, enabling seamless, interactive communications triggered by specific customer events. For those curious about path experimentation, the Advanced Edition supports testing various campaign paths to refine strategies further. These features are designed to address the evolving challenges marketers face today, ensuring businesses can deliver impactful, personalized marketing experiences.

From free training to product upgrades, additional goodies were shown off.

A connecting thread across the news dropped at Dreamforce is the use of AI and the crucial roles it plays across connecting with customers, understanding their needs, and ultimately building content and touchpoints that keep them engaged. Beyond new product features to support this trend, Salesforce will also offer free, hands-on AI courses and training for anyone. This is to help ensure that everyone can gain the skills they need to excel in a world transformed by AI. Learn more about the training here.

Finally, as reported earlier in September, Salesforce is offering its free Foundations upgrade to Sales Cloud and Service Cloud Enterprise Edition customers. Foundations provides a new, enhanced UI that gives brands a unified view of their customer. Read more about that update here.

Dreamforce 2024 was an incredible step forward in advancing AI-driven business growth and customer engagement.

This year’s Dreamforce left us with a wealth of insights and innovations that promise to reshape how businesses operate and interact with customers. From the transformative powers of Agentforce to the enriched capabilities of Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, the announcements this year underscore the pivotal role of AI in driving forward-looking strategies and enhancing business efficiency.

The emphasis on AI as a cornerstone for customer engagement and operational excellence reflects a broader industry shift. Salesforce's commitment to equipping businesses with the tools and knowledge to harness AI's potential is evident not only in its product offerings but also in the free educational resources made available to the community.

By fostering an ecosystem where technology and human ingenuity work hand-in-hand, Salesforce continues to empower brands to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape. As we look forward to the future, it is clear that the advancements unveiled at this year's event will serve as catalysts for growth, enabling brands to forge deeper connections with their customers and lead with confidence into the digital age.

What new features does Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition offer?

Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition offers a broad range of new product features, particularly focused on helping smaller marketing teams do more with less. At a crucial time when brands are racing to achieve new efficiencies with AI, enhance experimentation of user journeys and effortlessly collaborate across teams, new features in Advanced Edition are sure to please. Here’s what to look forward to:

Reimagined campaign home. Like Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition includes a reimagined and reengineered Campaign home. In this new experience marketers can view guidance on building key marketing components. Those include access guidance cards for tasks like creating audiences, creating content, and creating campaigns. Accessing recent campaigns in the new campaign home is easily done as well—just review a list view of your most recent campaigns.

AI-powered features. The Advanced Edition introduces robust AI integration, making sophisticated marketing tactics accessible to SMBs. Einstein Engagement Scoring will enable you to predict engagement to segment and personalize more effectively. Score every individual on their likelihood to open, click and stay subscribed to email and to convert. Then use those scores to create audiences, segments, split paths in Flow, and personalize content. Einstein Engagement Frequency helps ensure you send the right number of messages to optimize engagement. Markers will be able to see a distribution of their email sends and subscriber engagement for a given period of time. EEF will predict the optimal frequency range of emails to maximize engagement goals. This will allow you to adjust messaging cadence based on data, and create data extensions for over and under-messaged subscribers.

Dynamic content creation. With the Data Cloud data graph, marketers can build dynamic content directly within the content builder. This feature, which is also available in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, allows the configuration of rules that operate against your data graph, ensuring that your marketing material is as dynamic and responsive as your audience demands.

Event-driven messaging. Like the Growth Edition, Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition supports event-driven messaging, enabling marketers to trigger communications based on specific events, such as form submissions or commerce purchases.

Two-way conversational messaging. Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition enables marketers with Service Cloud and Digital Engagement to turn one-way promotions into a connected conversation. With help from Data Cloud, marketers gain the ability to respond in real-time with unified data to deliver connected interactions across departments and respond instantly.

Path Experiment. Companies using Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition are able to test up to ten paths to multiple variations of your campaign paths with varied channels, messaging copy, and cadence. Users can remove bias from testing paths by randomly assigning individuals to different paths to ensure fair and unbiased distribution. It is also possible to tailor the distribution of individuals across paths according to your specific testing needs.

There’s even more to look forward to soon. In addition to these Advanced-specific features, Salesforce will continue to build out innovations in both Growth and Advanced Edition, which customers will be able to use in October.

Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition addresses key CRM use cases.

Each of these new features are engineered to address key challenges and priorities marketers face today, ensuring their businesses can deliver highly personalized and effective marketing experiences. In fact, according to Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report (Ninth Edition), a staggering 88% of marketers believe they must innovate to meet rising customer expectations—but achieving that is impossible without a unified view of the customer. Here’s how Advanced Edition is designed to enable that use case and more.

Unify data for personalized engagements.

With both Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions, marketers can now personalize every customer engagement using a unified data source. This allows teams to create campaigns faster and more effectively with the aid of Salesforce's trusted AI.

Enable collaboration through greater data visibility.

Built on Salesforce's platform, both Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions offer brands or companies the opportunity to remove silos in their sales and marketing technology stacks. By choosing Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced you are bringing your core sales, marketing, service and commerce technologies together under one roof. This enables a profound change in the availability of your customer data, already in Salesforce CRM and Data Cloud, to be used by your marketing team. This goes a long way towards realizing the goal of gaining a unified view of your customers. This holistic view supports informed decision-making and enhances the overall customer experience.

Better understand customer journeys through detailed engagement metrics.

The upgraded Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions transition from simply measuring marketing influence through campaign members to utilizing detailed engagement metrics. Both editions will include Opportunity Influence, a feature launching in October, which use engagement data to tie closed and won opportunities and their revenue back to specific campaigns. This shift provides marketers with profound insights into how customer interactions drive sales. By understanding which engagements are more likely to lead to conversions, marketing teams can focus their efforts more strategically, including the creation of multi-channel journeys through both email and SMS.

Moreover, the feedback loop created by these metrics feeds data back into the marketing system. This allows for more targeted campaigns and sophisticated lead scoring, ensuring that only the most qualified leads are passed to sales. As a result, marketing becomes a more evident driver of growth, enhancing the value of every interaction and elevating the role of marketing within the business.

Is Advanced Edition fit for your team’s specific needs?

When considering whether the Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition is the right fit for your business, it's essential to understand who stands to benefit the most from these offerings, how they compare to other Salesforce products, and what your existing Salesforce setup looks like.

What separates Growth and Advanced Edition from other Marketing Cloud products?

Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition are streamlined versions of Salesforce's comprehensive Marketing Cloud, specifically designed to be intuitive and accessible. Built on the Lightning platform—the same foundation as Salesforce Sales Cloud—these versions allow new customers to set up and begin testing customer journeys quickly, without ever leaving their salesforce org.

For small and medium-sized businesses who are moving to Salesforce or already use Salesforce, it is in your best interest to use Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced for your marketing. By choosing Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, businesses immediately gain the ability to scale their marketing operations with one of the most cutting-edge marketing platforms available today, all from within their Salesforce instance.

What About Marketing Cloud Engagement?

If you are already utilizing Marketing Cloud Engagement or Account Engagement, this announcement does not affect the availability of those platforms. Salesforce will continue to innovate and enhance these existing platforms. While Growth and Advanced Edition both bring new features to the table now, Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement will continue to receive updates that bring each version into greater parity—meaning current customers won’t need to migrate to the new platforms to access future innovations.

Get started with Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition.

Getting setup with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition is designed to be straightforward and accessible, ensuring that your team can quickly harness the platform's power. The Advanced Edition is available in November, enabling businesses across AMER, EMEA and LATAM to begin leveraging advanced marketing functionalities without delay.

For current Salesforce customers, upgrading to Growth or Advanced Edition is seamless. Your team can continue operating on a single platform as your marketing footprint expands, eliminating the need for disruptive migrations and ensuring continuity in your marketing efforts. Importantly, all your existing marketing engagement data remains intact, preserving the insights and analytics you've built over time.

I’m excited to see these tools become more accessible to a broader range of businesses, granting them robust, enterprise-level data tools at a pivotal time as we navigate the new AI economy. And whether you're an existing user of Marketing Cloud or just starting with Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition, we are here to help you maximize the platform's features. Let us help you unlock the full potential of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions to ensure that you can seamlessly integrate and leverage these capabilities to drive your marketing success.

StreamSearch.Flow is an advanced AI technology tailored for live broadcast environments, enabling broadcasters to pinpoint and segment particular objects, brand logos, keywords and more as they appear in content in real time. It isn’t just visuals that StreamSearch.Flow picks up; it can also recognize designated words within the audio stream, ensuring content—like real-time highlights, post-event recaps and more—is curated with precision.

Effortlessly capture and segment the content your fans crave.

While content segmentation itself isn't entirely new, StreamSearch.Flow stands out by offering broadcasters the capability to perform these tasks instantaneously during a broadcast. This means broadcasters are no longer limited to curating highlights post-broadcast, but can instead enhance viewer experience dynamically as events unfold, seamlessly delivering the output to live audiences across streaming channels.

This unique functionality is powered by NVIDIA Holoscan for Media, an AI-enabled, software-defined platform for live media. Additionally, StreamSearch.Flow integrates seamlessly with Monks.Flow, our professional managed AI service, providing broadcasters with a robust and comprehensive AI solution that enhances live broadcast operations effortlessly.

Why does this matter? Well, imagine being able to compile highlight reels based on precise criteria, such as capturing every slam dunk made by a basketball player wearing a specific brand's shoes. Or using real-time content segmentation to manage brand safety by instantly censoring inappropriate content, such as foul language, whether it's spoken or displayed on signs in crowd shots.

Similarly, StreamSearch.Flow can be used to verify how long a brand is featured for product placement or other sponsorship opportunities. For instance, during a morning show cooking segment, it can measure and verify the screen time devoted to a branded cooking product, ensuring that it receives the intended exposure in alignment with the brand's marketing goals. Similarly, in the context of a sponsored event, you could track the duration that a brand's logo is displayed on screen—confirming that it meets the agreed-upon airtime in the sponsorship agreement and, thus enhancing accountability and trust between sponsors and the broadcast team.

Each of these above use cases are possible, whether you’re streaming over the airwaves or on platforms like TikTok, Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitch and more. So, how does it all come together? Let’s look under the hood.

Software-defined production paves the path for AI transformation in broadcast.

StreamSearch.Flow uses a highly adaptable large language model that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of a brand. By training the model to recognize keywords, logos or other content, broadcasters can ensure that their (or their audience’s) unique objectives are captured with ease. And because the model is trained specifically for their needs, brands mitigate the risk of sharing data with a publicly trained model, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected and proprietary.

AI tools like this thrive on software-defined production pipelines, which involve software to control and manage production processes in a way that is both flexible and automated. This replaces the traditional single-use hardware found in control rooms with versatile software applications. By integrating digital technologies instead—on premises or in the cloud—broadcasters can optimize their manufacturing and production workflows while reducing their physical footprint.

Traditionally, software-defined production involves using multiple virtual machines in the cloud, with each machine running a single software application due to the individual CPU requirements. Holoscan for Media enhances this approach through containerization, allowing multiple applications to share compute resources such as GPUs, CPUs, and RAM. This not only reduces the overall resources required but also facilitates lower latency and higher video quality. The efficiency of shared resources translates directly into superior performance and cost savings.

Holoscan for Media’s repertoire of applications for containerization is continuously expanding, with a substantial amount of software already containerized for broadcast pipelines. This makes it an ideal choice for us and our clients, supporting our vision that containerization will define the future of broadcasting by enabling functionality like StreamSearch.Flow.

Keep ahead of emerging viewing habits and cultural affinities.

The ability to segment content in real time opens a new world of possibilities for enhancing viewer engagement. For example, broadcasters can move beyond traditional demographic categorizations, curating content that resonates with viewer interests and cultural affinities. This personalized approach ensures that the content delivered aligns more closely with what audiences truly care about, such as the sneaker-themed basketball highlights mentioned above, thereby offering new and exciting advertising opportunities for brands looking to sponsor tailored content.

Additionally, streaming platforms can act on the consumption data they have collected from viewers to provide highly targeted and personalized viewing experiences that reflect individual preferences. This level of customization not only enhances viewer satisfaction but also helps validate viewer identities, accommodating interests that might not traditionally fit within traditional broadcast contexts—like the intersection of fashion or music with sports.

As viewing patterns and demographics shift, particularly among audiences who prefer social platforms for viewing highlights rather than live events on TV, StreamSearch.Flow enables broadcasters to adapt seamlessly and maintain relevance with their younger, more digitally savvy fans.

The broadcast landscape is evolving. Are you ready for it?

Software-defined production is revolutionizing the broadcast industry, enabling broadcasters to work more efficiently and effectively than ever before. With the growing adoption of Holoscan for Media, broadcasters are empowered to take greater control of their workflows, enhancing their ability to deliver new and engaging viewing experiences to their audiences.

StreamSearch.Flow exemplifies the seamless integration of AI technology into broadcasting, helping broadcasters provide hyper-relevant content that resonates deeply with viewers. As the developer of one of many innovative technologies driving this transformation, we seek to demonstrate the potential of AI to reshape how content is curated and consumed.

We’ll continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in broadcasting, leveraging the latest technology from partners like NVIDIA to bring about the next wave of technological advancement—all to deliver cutting-edge solutions that meet the evolving needs of broadcasters and their audiences.

This award was established to celebrate customer champions and how they are using Workato technology to transform their teams and build organizational effectiveness. Our innovation experiment leveraged Workato’s integration capabilities to bring together Salesforce, Google Gemini and Slack to enable us the ability to talk to our CRM data. Weaving these technologies together into an intuitive natural language interface significantly simplifies the user experience while streamlining complex workflows and enhancing data accessibility.

My colleague Erin Freeman, Director of Automation Strategy at Monks, emphasized the strategic importance of integrating AI to democratize data access across the organization. She stated, "Our goal was not just to simplify processes but to empower every team member to make data-driven decisions effortlessly. This project represents a significant leap towards achieving that vision."

Enabling technical and nontechnical people both the ability to analyze and extract insights is key to a healthy, modern business. Earlier this year, S4Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell noted that democratization of knowledge was a primary opportunity for AI innovation. He told the International News Media Association, “You will be able, with AI, to educate everyone in an organization. AI will flatten organizations, de-silo them. It will bring you a much more agile, leaner, flatter organization.” Building off of our experience developing end-to-end, AI-powered workflows like Monks.Flow, we sought to experiment internally how we could leverage Workato to help information travel across the business.

Automated data analysis could be as easy as having a conversation.

Imagine a world where you can interact with your business systems as easily as having a conversation. This vision becomes a reality when you bridge multiple systems—like project management tools, NetSuite for financials, and client presentation software—into a unified, conversational interface. Integrating these systems can streamline complex workflows to enhance data accessibility and improve the user experience.

When it comes to CRM adoption, a longstanding challenge has been simplifying interactions for end users who are unaccustomed to complex concepts like Opportunities and Stage Lifecycles addressed by their platform of choice. Traditionally, navigating through these systems involves convoluted click paths, prompting the question: what if simply conversing with your system was the norm?

A few years back, Salesforce took an interesting step toward this vision with Einstein Voice, which aimed to connect Amazon Alexa to Salesforce. While those conversations were very scripted and limited, they showcased the potential of conversational interactions with business systems. But today, the rise of large language models (LLMs) are inspiring new ways of supporting sophisticated conversations with Salesforce.

Automating CRM insights is as easy as one, two, three.

To bring this innovative solution to life, we began by leveraging the robust capabilities of Salesforce as our core CRM platform. Salesforce is a leading customer relationship management platform, providing comprehensive tools for sales, customer service, marketing, and more. Despite its robust capabilities, navigating through its vast array of features can be daunting for users who are less familiar with CRM. Our goal was to simplify interactions with the platform by enabling natural language communication.

We then turned to Workato to bridge Salesforce with other essential systems and services. Workato's powerful integration capabilities allowed us to create seamless workflows, enabling data flow and process automation across platforms. By configuring Workato, we ensured that Salesforce could communicate with Google Gemini and Slack, forming the backbone of our conversational interface (more on those immediately below).

The integration of Google Gemini's API was a pivotal step. With its advanced language understanding and generation capabilities, Gemini allowed us to embed natural language processing into our system. This enabled users to perform complex Salesforce operations simply by conversing with the system, transforming user interactions into intuitive experiences.

Finally, we chose Slack as the prompt interface, taking advantage of its widespread use and intuitive nature. By developing a Slack bot, we created a familiar environment for users to interact naturally with Salesforce. Slack's robust communication tools allowed users to issue commands and receive responses effortlessly, making complicated CRM operations as simple as a chat.

Here's how this innovation works in practice. Imagine the typical start to Carli's day, a project manager at an advertising agency. Previously, beginning her morning routine involved logging into various systems, sifting through multiple tabs, and deciphering complex dashboards just to get a handle on client projects. Now, with her morning coffee in hand, Carli simply opens Slack and types a message to the integrated agent: "Hey, what are we doing with Acme?" Instantly, the system, powered by the Google Gemini, replies, "We are currently in the proposal stage with Acme, with a scheduled presentation next Tuesday."

This seamless interaction illustrates the transformative power of integrating conversational AI with business systems. Gone are the days of cumbersome navigation and overwhelming interfaces. But the benefits don't end there. Later, when Carli needs to update the status of the Acme project, she simply types, "I sent the proposal to Acme.” Immediately understanding the context of what to do with that information, the system swiftly processes her request, triggers the appropriate workflow in Workato, and updates Salesforce—all without her having to leave the Slack interface. These interactions not only demonstrate ease of use but also highlight the enhanced efficiency and strategic insights that conversational interfaces can provide, freeing Carli to focus more on her strategic role rather than the mechanics of data entry.

This is only the beginning of what we can do with AI in CRM.

The journey towards democratizing data and fostering seamless information sharing is far from over. Empowering users with the ability to interact naturally with their business systems transforms how information travels across an organization. This democratization not only enhances organizational effectiveness but also aligns with the vision of creating a more agile, de-siloed business environment. Looking ahead, the potential for expanding this conversational interface into additional systems is immense.

Imagine integrating financial management systems like NetSuite to offer real-time financial insights, making the complex world of accounting as simple as asking a question. Or consider connecting project management tools such as Jira, where tasks, deadlines, and project progress can be managed through straightforward conversational commands. Moreover, the ability to seamlessly access and update presentation software could redefine client interactions, allowing for effortless preparation and presentation without the need to juggle multiple platforms.

The integration of Salesforce, Workato, Google Gemini and Slack represents a pivotal step towards the dream of conversational business systems. This proof of concept not only highlights the transformative potential of advanced conversational interfaces in enhancing CRM adoption and usability but also sets the stage for a future where interactions with business systems are more intuitive and user-friendly than ever. As LLMs continue to evolve, we anticipate even more powerful and seamless interactions, paving the way for a new era in enterprise software. By incorporating additional systems into this ecosystem, businesses stand to gain unprecedented efficiency and accessibility, heralding a future where managing complex operations is as effortless as having a conversation.