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.

Our talk, “Combating Early Student Drop-Off with Conversational SMS Journeys in Marketing Cloud,” focused on a use case well known in the education sector: addressing drop-off rates for students embarking on their first experience with online learning. However, the tools and strategies we covered are just as relevant for brand marketers of online or SAAS products who are looking to combat similar issues when needing to comprehensively onboard customers to prevent churn. By understanding how to maintain engagement and foster loyalty from the start, businesses can drive significant growth and success.

In our presentation, Ghea and I demonstrated how personalized, multi-touchpoint SMS journeys can keep students—or any customers—engaged. We utilized Salesforce Marketing Cloud's powerful SMS features and used data extensions and AMPScript to craft dynamic and responsive communications. By leveraging these features and the integration of Marketing Cloud with Salesforce CRM, we created a framework that enhances customer support and interaction. This integration also enables real-time insights and proactive support, ensuring that your brand can meet the needs of your audience promptly.

 The journey we designed also highlights the use of Salesforce Sales Cloud to keep student advisors abreast of their cohort’s journey, and for advanced tracking and reporting that provides a comprehensive view of customer interactions. If you're interested in discovering how these techniques can help your business reduce churn and build stronger customer connections, I invite you to watch the full presentation. You'll learn how to implement a proactive, personalized approach that not only addresses existing challenges but also anticipates future needs. You'll also gain valuable insights into creating personalized communication that resonates with your audience, driving lasting engagement and loyalty.

Three updates to Amazon’s real-time measurement and analytics suite.

Gone are the days of waiting until the end of a campaign to understand what worked. Amazon’s advancements in measurement and analytics allow advertisers to adjust their strategies in real-time, maximizing ROI and optimizing performance on the fly.

1. Multi-Touch Attribution (beta). Tracks how multiple ad touchpoints influence conversions, including behavioral experiments, offering real-time insights so that mid-campaign adjustments can be made for better results. 

2. Conversion Path Reporting (beta). Identifies the key customer journeys and reveals how ads work together to drive conversions over a 30-day window, helping brands craft more targeted and effective campaigns. 

3. Long-Term Sales (beta). Allows brands to measure the impact of upper-funnel ads over 12 months, offering insights into how early impressions influence long-term sales growth. Also, this beta will help advertisers estimate yearly campaign impact on a brands sales across ad types.  

Three creative solutions to make content creation more accessible.

A major theme of this year’s event was the rise of AI in making creativity more accessible, powerful, and scalable for brands of all sizes. 

1. AI Creative Studio (beta). A centralized platform that brings together AI tools to help create and iterate thousands of ads effortlessly. Everyone, from beginners to seasoned professionals, can now access AI-generated images and videos, produce top-tier content and store it all in one place. 

2. Video Generator (beta). A free, AI-powered tool that simplifies video production, making ad-ready content more accessible to brands with limited time or resources. Video marketing is now faster, easier and more approachable for everyone. 

3. Audio Generator. This allows advertisers using Amazon DSP to create high-quality, interactive audio ads in minutes. Voice commands like, “Alexa, add to cart” make these ads dynamic and engaging, helping capture new customers and drive conversions.

Three innovative ad solutions to expand reach and drive results.

Amazon continues to expand possibilities for advertisers with new ad formats that enable brands to reach a wider, more targetable audience across premium channels, all without breaking the bank.

1. Sponsored TV. This self-service solution makes streaming TV ads accessible to brands of all sizes, with no minimum spend required. Now within reach for everyone, these ads deliver a 58% higher conversion rate compared to traditional TV ads when paired with Sponsored Ads (Amazon). 

2. Audience Bidding Controls. Combine Amazon Marketing Cloud data with your Sponsored Ads campaigns to unlock new potential. Leverage AMC insights to craft targeted audiences and adjust bids for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, boosting visibility, measurability and driving more sales.

3. Prime Video Interactive Ad Solutions (beta). These interactive ads on Prime Video allow viewers to engage directly with brands, add items to their cart, or learn more about products without disrupting the viewing experience. According to Amazon, these ads can double brand favorability and increase purchases by 36%. 

Six updates to Amazon DSP and AMC for more efficient campaigns. 

Amazon’s updates to its Demand-Side Platform (DSP) and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) reflect a focus on efficiency, control and making advanced tools accessible to all advertisers. 

1. Amazon DSP Ad Relevance. Target audiences without relying on ad IDs by leveraging Amazon’s proprietary signals and AWS-powered AI. This update helps future-proof campaigns as privacy regulations evolve. 

2. Amazon DSP Performance+. AI-driven campaigns designed to maximize ROI for specific conversion goals. Automation reduces manual effort, delivering better results with less hassle. 

3. Amazon Marketing Cloud for Sponsored Ads. Brands working with an Amazon Partner and running Sponsored Ads can now access AMC insights without needing DSP. Using AMC Audiences, brands can better target customers throughout their shopping journey, tailoring ad bids to specific segments for higher conversion rates. 

4. AMC Solutions. A suite of tools designed to generate insights from Amazon Marketing Cloud data and take swift action on those insights. It’s user-friendly, requiring no SQL knowledge or advanced analytics skills.

5. Ads Data Manager (beta). A tool to streamline first-party data management across Amazon Ads products. Brands can control their data, enabling more effective, privacy-safe ad strategies. 

6. AMC Audience with Publisher Data (beta). Leverage publishers’ first-party data to target audiences across platforms like iOS and Firefox, which are traditionally harder to reach. No ad IDs required, just smarter targeting. 

Amazon’s innovations are bridging the gap between creativity and efficiency for advertisers.

Amazon’s suite of new tools–whether it’s AI-powered creative studios, interactive video, or advanced measurement–delivers a blend of efficiency, accessibility, and creative freedom for advertisers. This means a greater control over campaigns, with the flexibility to experiment, measure, and refine campaigns.

From streamlining ad creation to offering real-time insights, these updates open doors for advertisers and brands of all sizes to test, learn, and engage their audiences more effectively. With more advanced creative options and data-driven insights, advertisers can fine-tune their campaigns to achieve both short-term gains and long-term growth. 

Wrapping up Amazon unBoxed 2024 and what’s next for Amazon ads. 

In sum, Amazon unBoxed 2024 brought a wealth of new innovations that will shape how brands reach and resonate with their audiences. As we move into 2025, it’s clear that those who embrace AI-driven, interactive, and data-rich tools will have a significant advantage in building meaningful connections and driving real results. 

A new era of Amazon Ads is here, and it’s more accessible, flexible and powerful than before. Our team is ready to guide brands through these updates and ensure they get the most out of Amazon’s latest innovations. From exploring AI-powered creativity to optimizing campaigns with real-time analytics, let’s connect and start driving success today.

Together, these events painted a vivid picture of an industry in the midst of profound change, driven by technology and data-driven insights—and as you can imagine, we attended all three. Whether you were elsewhere in the world or only had the chance to attend one of the three overlapping events, find some key insights that were shared below.

At Advertising Week NY, we shared the secrets to prompting AI for ideal outputs.

As one can imagine, AI was a hot topic throughout Advertising Week, with many speakers mentioning the balance of “art and science” in their creative workflows. Our EVP of Digital Media Brittany Blanchard walked us through exactly what that looks like in a conversation with Noël Paasch, Global Head of Creative Strategy & Programs at YouTube Ads Marketing. In the conversation, Blanchard gave us a glimpse behind the scenes at our work with sleep wellness company Hatch, in which Google Gemini played a key role in the ideation phase.

While generative AI helps us achieve a workable draft or proof of concept in seconds, users may still feel a sense of writer’s block when faced with an empty prompt: how do I verbalize what it is that I’m looking for from the LLM? Blanchard offered insight into how she and her team prompt LLMs like Google Gemini to ensure high-quality outputs.

“You need to give Gemini or the LLM a lot of information to get what you want,” she said. “We use the ‘COSTAR’ method, which is an acronym for the inputs you should provide to Gemini: context, objective, style, tone, audience and response.” For example, context would mean explaining your role and your business, while the objective would be the ultimate goal of the campaign you’re building.

Sometimes, the LLM will react in a way that wasn’t anticipated—in which Blanchard suggests taking a flexible approach. She gave the example of asking Gemini for direct quotes from social media and product reviews left by customers, which the LLM denied citing privacy concerns. But it could provide anonymized paraphrases of that content instead, which benefited the team’s consumer research all the same.

A new twist on a traditional tactic: contextual advertising had its moment in the spotlight.

In addition to AI, another common theme at Advertising Week NY was a more traditional marketing tactic that has been given a new lease on life: contextual advertising. What was once the traditional approach of linking ads with relevant content in print or linear TV has now become more robust thanks to analytics tools and CTV. This helps brands ensure their content is relevant to consumers without the creepiness factor that can come with other forms of personalization that rely primarily on demographic data.

Nick Fairbairn, VP of Marketing at Chime, shared another key benefit of this approach: brand safety, which is especially important when you are a startup that is still working to establish the voice and values of your brand with audiences.

Marketing experts shared how to speak the language of Gen Z.

If the frenzy around Taylor Swift’s Eras tour (and subsequent romance with Travis Kelce) taught us anything, it’s that fandoms are the lifeblood of culture—particularly with Gen Z— propelling trends and conversations into the mainstream with unmatched fervor. Brands looking to engage authentically with Gen Z must immerse themselves in these communities, recognizing their power to shape narratives and influence broader cultural movements.

Megan Weales, Social Media Manager at Wattpad, a platform that thrives on user-generated creativity and fandom, put it this way: “We aim to be one of our users—that’s how we stay engaged with Gen Z.” This approach is about more than just understanding what interests their audience; it’s about digging deeper to understand why consumers gravitate toward their favorite fandoms. For Wattpad, this means participating in communities like #BookTok to learn about what stories and tropes resonate with audiences.

At Mirren AI & Tech Summit, we gave a peek into the development of tools like Monks.Flow.

While Advertising Week NY took place, some of our Monks went downtown to participate in Mirren AI & Tech Summit, focused on artificial intelligent and technology in advertising and marketing. Speakers shared how to implement AI and new technologies across various aspects of agency operations, ultimately helping the community better leverage the technology for client management, strategic development, creative work, new business acquisition, and back-end operations.

Our SVP of Media Solutions & Emerging Technology Victoria Milo gave insight into our end-to-end, AI-powered professional managed service Monks.Flow and the principles that shaped it: the need for a tool that is future-proof, flexible and has ease of management. But another key need that she addressed is interoperability into the brand’s existing tech stack.

Like Blanchard, Milo discussed our work with Hatch to make the case for how AI is encouraging multidisciplinary teams to collaborate more strategically. “Think about who the players are when you're using AI, because it's usually not just you and a client—there's usually a tech partner involved and a platform,” she said. “We're seeing the full spectrum of your marketing department work together--it's not just a creative conversation, a media conversation. You'll have multiple discipline at the table, so the way of working has to adapt.”

A demo of Stable Diffusion walked audiences through ways to build incredible visuals.

Speaking of AI tools, Group Creative Director of Innovation Vanessa Lai and Senior Director of Technology & AI Samuel Snider-Held walked the audience through how to use Stable Diffusion to generate impressive visual results. In addition to weighing the pros and cons of the tool compared to others—for example, it’s more technically complex, but that also opens up greater control of different parameters and enhanced customizability—the two showcased how Stable Diffusion integrates with other platforms like Blender and Photoshop to accelerate visual creativity.

At Brand Innovators, the move toward first-party data strategies remained a key topic.

AI and first-party data were key themes at a recent industry conference, where our VP of Enterprise Data & Digital Media Consulting Kosta Demopoulos sat with Randip Mitra, Head of Global Data Strategy at Kenvue, to discuss first-party data collection and activation. The conversation drew from our work with Kenvue to build an industry-leading global privacy-compliant adtech solution to efficiently use first-party data through modeling, segmentation, and measurement.

Mitra provided insights on adapting to Google’s decision not to deprecate third-party cookies and emphasized that the importance of building robust first-party data ecosystems remained. “The overall destination is still the same, right? We need to move towards a kind of a third-party independent, more consented marketing approach," he said.

Beyond protecting consumer privacy, a robust first-party data strategy unearths incredible behavioral insights that can ultimately help drive targeted marketing. "Understanding what our consumers are doing—what actions they’re taking, are they downloading coupons, are they going to retailer sites—it really helps us understand the content they’re interacting with, the seasonal trends, how should we tweak our messaging and promotions," he said. Furthermore, these insights can enhance precision targeting with AI and machine learning.

Insights from Mars showcased the evolving dynamics of brand strategy and AI integration.

Elsewhere at Brand Innovators, our VP of Growth Samantha Lynch engaged in a conversation with Heather Stuckey, VP of Brands and Content Marketing, North America at Mars. They discussed the evolving landscape of brand strategy, agency partnerships, and the integration of AI in marketing. Stuckey, who has transitioned from a robust career in advertising to a leading role at Mars, shared insights into leveraging agency experience for brand-side innovation. “I loved being on the advertising side, but I was curious about brand building beyond communications,” she mentioned, highlighting the significance of understanding brand dynamics from a holistic perspective.

The two also explored the crucial role agency partnerships play in fostering creativity and challenging brand perspectives. Stuckey emphasized, "What I appreciate so much about our agency partners is they're able to challenge us, bringing new ideas that help us engage with our consumers on a deeper level."

AI's transformative potential was a key theme, with examples like the Starburst “Different Every Time” campaign, where AI-generated assets were used to resonate with consumer behavior. “It's things like that we're just testing and learning,” Stuckey noted, pointing to AI's role in content creation and consumer engagement. “We're focused on modern approaches to brand building, driving personalization at scale and ensuring connected brand experiences.”

Driving impactful marketing solutions demands embracing innovation and adaptability.

As the curtain falls on a week of intense exploration and dialogue across Advertising Week NY, Mirren AI & Tech Summit, and Brand Innovators, one thing is clear: our work continues to be reshaped by the dynamic interplay of AI, data-driven insights and innovative strategies. These events not only highlighted the cutting-edge technologies and methodologies poised to define the future but also emphasized the importance of adapting to these shifts to maintain relevance in a rapidly evolving industry.

Embracing the themes discussed, from leveraging AI for creative processes to refining data strategies for enhanced consumer engagement, is crucial for brands and agencies looking to stay ahead. As we integrate these insights into our own practices, we continue to foster a collaborative environment where creativity, technology, and data converge to drive impactful marketing solutions. The path forward is as much about embracing change as it is about leading it, and these events have provided the roadmap to help teams do just that.

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.

In partnership with Cannes Lions, this contest showcases emerging talent globally. Open to employees with up to seven years of industry experience, participants join in pairs to compete across multiple categories. Three teams will earn a trip to Cannes, with one standout team gaining the additional honor of attending the prestigious Creative Academy.

The contest includes three categories that explore creativity in different ways:

• Film: Deliver cinematic stories for screens of all sizes, featuring elements like original concepting, scriptwriting, visual treatments, film treatments, shooting, directing, editing, VFX, post—and everything in between.
• Innovation: Turn visionary, future-facing ideas into reality using the latest in emerging tech and formats, resulting in groundbreaking experiences and new possibilities.
• Interactive: Go beyond the mundane while putting the audience at the heart of every moment, giving them the opportunity to immerse themselves in compelling, transformative digital experiences.

So, what creative challenge were they trying to solve? This year, the brief focused on a fictional beauty and skincare brand called TriVitalize. The mission: build an innovative and social-first campaign to launch a new line of sustainable, luxury shower products, with the goal of recapturing market share and shelf space.

Interestingly, all three winning teams were from Latin America, with two teams from Brazil and one from Argentina. Juan Orlievsky and Julia Calvo won in the Film category for a campaign that plays on the “shower thoughts” phenomenon; while Everton Souda and Thiago Assunção won in the Innovation category with the “feelings translator,” an AI-powered technology that turns customer testimonials into beautiful, synesthetic works of art.

But the top win went to Hitamara Tamizou and Matias Marcossi in the Interactive category. Their project, “My Side of the Mirror,” is a clever take on self-affirmations inspired by the insight that women criticize themselves on an average of four times a day. Realizing that feeling good about yourself while looking in the mirror can often be a challenge, their concept centers around an AI-powered app that features a personalized digital double, based on the user’s likeness and voice, that greets them with messages of affirmation.

We had a chance to speak to Hitamara and Matias to learn more about their winning concept and how it came to be. Read below to peek behind the scenes into the creative process.

What were your initial impressions of the brief, and how did that lead to the beginning stages of developing your concept?

Matias: First of all, we found it a little challenging to work with a brand that is fictional, because you don’t have previous information of how the brand communicates with the public. So the challenge begins there.

We started by doing our research, which was pretty easy because we had a lot of material based on the struggles that women face through their lives. As a transgender person, I remember those struggles very well—and now I have new ones. So, the first thing was to think about this fictional brand and how we could bring them to life in a way that spoke to those struggles.

Hitamara: I say myself in those statistics about women criticizing themselves. So this work means a lot to me, because I not only saw myself within it but could participate in discussions that help solve those challenges and support women by building the self-confidence that they usually lack. That focus on confidence, for me, helped shape the creative idea.

Matias: Next, we tried to think how we could universalize that experience. We are both based in Brazil, so a lot of our initial thinking focused on that experience—but given the fact that this is a global brand, we had to think of how we could connect with women everywhere.

Universalizing the idea for “My Side of the Mirror” grew from the trope of fantasy and fairy tales that are well known across different cultures. For example, you see the queen in Snow White ask, who’s the most beautiful woman in the world? And it’s not her; it’s Snow White. We wanted women to be able to seek approval from themselves through self-affirmation.

You mentioned research, and your concept draws heavily on insights and statistics. What were you looking for when embarking on the research phase?

Hitamara: A lot of our research focused on the experience of Black women in particular, as they make up a significant portion of our population in Brazil. But while our finished concept is focused on fun and self-confidence, we were initially thinking around heavier themes like harassment and the lack of safety women feel, because in order to have the opportunity to take care of yourself, you have to make it home first. In Brazil, many women face harassment on the street.

Matias: We thought a lot about external issues like harassment and violence, but realized that we were creating more fear rather than finding solutions. This prompted us to look internally at what we can change within ourselves, seeking positive solutions to more personal challenges like self-confidence.

You had a diverse range of personas in mind when developing your concept. How did their particular needs influence your creative approach?

Matias: This goes back to what I said before about universalizing the experience. The personas were a very important part here, because while the creative idea is designed to appeal to everyone, how people engage with it can be very different. How does someone in the Deaf community see themselves, how might a blind person feel their skin differently?

We didn’t have a star at the center of the campaign; it’s about putting the focus on yourself. I think brands should do more of that strategy—instead of hiring a famous musician, how can we allow the consumer to be at the center of the experience? Many people with disabilities, for example, never see themselves in a beauty campaign, but we can change that. And focusing on a minority doesn’t limit the appeal, either; it creates empathy for everyone, because empathy is a universal feeling.

Did the experience of participating in the contest give you the chance to use skills outside of your day-to-day roles?

Matias: As a copywriter, representing and expanding upon the idea through copy was routine. But for the real clients that we work with, the brand is already well defined in terms of its visuals and overall look—so we have a limited range sometimes when it comes to producing really big ideas like this one.

Hitamara: I am a motion graphic designer, but in this work, I was able to take on the role of an art director. Like Matias said, real brands often have their design language and visuals laid out, so I was excited to have the opportunity to develop all the visual aspects of the fictional brand and its campaign—and I love working with Matias! This opportunity really encouraged me to do my best and to show my creativity. When we finished the project, I felt really proud of what we accomplished.

In addition to the AI-powered experience, your pitch also touches on making the experience shareable on social and using that to hijack toxic beauty trends. Could you discuss that aspect of the work?

Matias: Effectively using social media is key for a young brand, especially on channels like TikTok where it’s easy to go viral with the right content. Still, social media harbors a lot of toxic content that shapes how we perceive ourselves, so we thought, let’s hack that to deliver a positive message to people who need to see it most. Our concept prioritizes an organic strategy to social rather than a paid one, thinking that that approach would make the message more appealing and relevant to our audience.

Your work takes a very socially purposeful approach to the use of AI. AI is a technology that inspires both excitement and unease; what’s your take on its use and potential in marketing?

Matias: I see AI as a powerful tool to change self-perception. I have a bunch of ideas that involve AI now, especially when related to the trans community. I think it has the power to amplify connections, but for that we need to develop a very responsible and empathetic vision for it. We are trying to make that here, not just with “My Side of the Mirror,” but in other ways that we use AI.

For example, we can use generative AI to aid in representation; if I type “transgender person” as a prompt and keep pressing enter, it’s going to show me a different result every time. That can teach people that we can’t be put in a box; you may have expectations about my body, but there are infinite ways we can express ourselves.

Hitamara: As an art director and motion designer, AI can be incredibly helpful throughout the creative process, but there are ethical concerns as well. Artists are afraid of their style being stolen, and there’s a similar discussion to be had about the risk of cultural appropriation in AI’s output. So while I’ve relied on AI a lot to optimize and amplify my own work, I don’t forget or shy away from those moral or ethical concerns. It’s a powerful tool, but it comes with responsibility.

Finally, your prize for winning the contest is a trip to Cannes. How does it feel?

Matias: I couldn’t sleep in the days following the announcement that we won! I was really, really excited. It’s a great opportunity, especially as a transgender person; you don’t see a lot of us in the industry, so bringing that representation to such an important place is almost like a duty.

Prior to my time at Media.Monks, I was a teacher, but decided to switch careers in search of better working conditions. So, this is a message for all the people out there like me that you can do it as well. You have such great ideas—it is achievable.

Hitamara: I had originally studied chemistry, so I made a big change in my career as well. Media.Monks is the first agency that I’ve worked at, and I’ve been here for almost three years. During that time, I’ve found it to be a great place for talent development. Winning NextUp.Monks is like a dream—I’m living a dream.

Finally, we would also like to congratulate our Silver and Bronze winners.

Interactive, Silver:

• Leah Zhao, Creative Technologist
• Ed Lee, Developer

Interactive, Bronze:

• Rodrigo Escobedo, AV Social Developer
• Carlos Cravioto, AV Social Developer

Film, Silver:

• Santiago Cifuentes, Motion Graphics Designer
• Felipe Chavez, Art Director

Film, Bronze:

• Sergio Cardozo, Designer
• Alejandra Gonzalez, Designer

Innovation, Silver—which includes a tie between two teams:

• Eyleen Camargo, Art Director
• Kyara Ortega, Copywriter
• Mariana Ramirez Feijoo, Art Director
• Evelyn Su Pérez Islas, AV Developer

Innovation, Bronze:

• Grace Tankersley, Copywriter
• Diana Backer, Senior Creative