Summit Sneaks: Get ready for a 'personalized' experience

I tend to think the words, "personalize" and "experience" were the two most used words at Adobe Summit 17, this week, and when you put them together, you get the theme for the week in Las Vegas, "personalized experience."

That theme culminated with Summit Sneaks on Wednesday night, with SNL's Kate McKinnon appearing on and off stage for a fun showcase.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) were part of the offerings at the annual “Summit Sneaks.” Hosted by McKinnon, attendees received a sneak peek at new technologies designed to dramatically improve customer experience. Powering each of Summit Sneaks’ previews and demos is Adobe Sensei, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as Adobe’s massive volume of content and data assets, to tackle today’s most complex experience challenges. Sneaks topics and audience favorites often become part of future product offerings.

McKinnon thrived in this environment as she was just as big of geek as anyone else in the room.

All great experiences start with amazing design and deep intelligence, which have long been Adobe’s core competencies. Sneaks is the opportunity for Adobe’s top R&D talent to showcase work that pushes the boundaries in these domains.

Some of the projects Adobe and McKinnon showed off on Wednesday along with crazy antics included:: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality VR advertising: When done effectively, VR can be personalized and immersive while feeling natural. This project combines technology across Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud to enable real-time advertising in a VR environment. Picture an individual wearing a VR headset, placed in the middle of New York’s Times Square. As she looks around, billboards are replaced in real-time. The deep learning capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei and the analytics and advertising capabilities in Adobe Experience Cloud identify what the customer would likely be interested in and pull the appropriate assets from within Creative Cloud.

Future of retail: The Microsoft HoloLens is driving the ability to compute in the physical world. The potential to visualize and layer data over objects—through voice commands and gestures—offers the ability for brands to see how consumers navigate physical spaces. This project illustrates the opportunities for retailers by showing how in-store shopper interactions can be captured and visualized within Adobe Analytics. For instance, by placing sensors on its items, a retailer can see that a product is generating heavy foot traffic and release more variations and promotions to serve customer demand. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Intelligent website personalization: Personalized web experiences increase brand engagement and conversion. This project taps into Adobe Sensei’s AI technology to make intuitive recommendations about both layout and content. A travel website, for example, could input retirees as its target audience. Using Adobe Sensei’s capabilities, the site can mine the brand’s digital asset system in Adobe Experience Cloud to recommend the most effective layout and brand assets.

Geo-based audience targeting: This project will allow brands with a physical presence to tap into location technologies and engage consumers on the move with relevant content and promotions. Using a core service in Adobe Marketing Cloud, a fast food chain could identify groups of opted-in users that display purchase intent through engagement with the brand’s mobile app. Through patterns identified with Adobe Sensei’s machine learning, users are grouped by location and can be served up customized promotions that drive them to the restaurant. The Internet of Things Next generation voice assistant: Interactions with interfaces such as Amazon Alexa are currently transactional and anonymous, where users receive information on general topics such as movie show times or playlists. This project takes core Adobe Experience Cloud technologies and Amazon’s open APIs to create a more intelligent and personalized assistant. For example, consumers can ask Alexa for their reward status for a hotel chain or airline. Alexa can then use their customer profile data and preferences to recommend promotions or activities that take advantage of those reward points/miles in a transparent and privacy conscious manner.