Adobe CMO says AI tools are changing how shoppers find brands

Marketing chiefs are being pushed to rethink how customers find products as AI chat tools begin to take over tasks once handled through search engines. Lara Balazs, Adobe’s chief marketing officer, told Fortune that the shift is changing how brands measure visibility, organize teams and work with the rest of the C-suite.

For years, Balazs said, marketers heard a familiar demand: spend less while producing more impact. Now, she said, the instruction from companies is broader and less defined: use AI.

That order is difficult because marketing departments do not yet have an established model for the AI era, according to Fortune. As consumers ask systems such as ChatGPT to compare products, summarize reviews and suggest purchases, companies face a new risk: a brand that does not show up in an AI-generated answer may miss the customer before that person reaches its website.

Search metrics lose some of their grip

Search engine optimization has guided digital marketing for more than 20 years, giving companies a way to track how people discover products and services. Fortune reported that this framework is under pressure as more product research moves into AI interfaces.

Balazs said marketing leaders are already seeing drops in traffic and revenue once tied to search. At Adobe, the company began studying the change after seeing declines in traffic linked to traditional search, which had been a measurable source of revenue, according to Fortune.

That work led Adobe to build LLM Optimizer, a tool meant to measure and improve how often Adobe products appear in answers produced by large language models. Balazs told Fortune that after Adobe deployed the tool, brand visibility for products including Acrobat and Firefly rose 200%.

Marketers are still working out how to measure this kind of AI visibility, Fortune reported. The emerging questions include how often a product is mentioned, whether it is recommended and how those appearances affect buying decisions.

Marketing moves closer to technology decisions

The change is also expanding the CMO’s job beyond campaigns, media and brand strategy. Balazs told Fortune that marketing leaders are at a disadvantage if they are not in regular contact with the chief financial officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer and other senior executives.

According to Fortune, customer insight from marketing is now feeding decisions about data systems, technology, product development, workflow and investment. That means CMOs increasingly need financial knowledge, technical literacy and the ability to lead across departments, along with traditional brand and demand-generation skills.

Balazs said AI work should begin with a specific business goal rather than broad experimentation. She recommends giving each effort an executive sponsor, clear ownership and a team prepared to test, learn and adjust before expanding the work.

Companies are also changing how marketing teams are built, according to Fortune. Balazs described “mission teams” that bring together marketers, engineers, product managers and data specialists around business goals; other companies use terms such as swarms or tiger teams.

The CMO role broadens

Balazs described the modern CMO to Fortune as a “chief marketing orchestrator,” reflecting a job that now involves coordinating people, data, technology and AI across the company. She also said most marketers, herself included, are not engineers.

The task, as she described it, is to understand the technology well enough to ask useful questions and connect technical capabilities to business outcomes. Balazs told Fortune that mindset will matter, especially for teams willing to learn, work through uncertainty and adapt as the tools change.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.