October 2, 2012
By Judith Aquino,

Adobe Beefs up AdLens Solution

In an effort to further streamline its marketing solutions, Adobe unveiled today updates to Adobe AdLens (formerly known as Efficient Frontier), its cloud-based, multichannel advertising optimization solution, that include integrations with two of its other products: SiteCatalyst and AudienceManager.

AdLens helps marketers manage and optimize their search, display, and social advertising as a unified campaign. Through an integration with the analytics solution SiteCatalyst, advertisers get greater conversion metrics and reporting tools that enable them to make more strategic media decisions, according to the company.

The integration with AudienceManager, which lets users segment their audiences, gives users even more options for targeting their campaigns. AudienceManager is designed to help marketers identify and quantify their most "high-value" audience segments, according to Adobe.

"Given all of the ads online today and competition for prime ad placement, reaching the right audience with targeted campaigns has never been more important," writes Adobe director of campaign management Bill Mungovan in a blog post. "AdLens…gives marketers the ability to expand display ad targeting and optimization across ad distribution platforms."

In addition, after being designated as a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer last month, Adobe can now also offer its AdLens users access to Facebook Exchange, which allows marketers to buy ads on Facebook via real-time bidding.

AdLens users will also receive the following features and capabilities:

Unified view of media campaigns: Users can see which media campaigns are impacting business metrics such as conversion and revenue.
New dashboard and data visualizations: A new user interface provides access to enhanced features like inline editing, advanced filtering for advertisers with millions of keywords, and automated custom labeling.
Unified multimedia interface: Adobe now offers AdLens users access to campaign management and optimization features through integrations with Baidu, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo/Bing, and Yandex.
Flexible attribution models and forecasting: Users can better forecast which channel, or combination of channels, will yield results according to changes in their budgets or goals.
Automation: An automated purchasing option lets users buy more ads based on bidding models and algorithms.

Following on the heels of Salesforce.com's launch of its all-in-one Marketing Cloud solution, Adobe's announcement reflects the continuing race among vendors to one-up each other on added functionalities and features.

"Today, we've connected our ad-buying platform into our analytics solution in a way that strengthens both offerings," maintains Mungovan. "Tomorrow? Stay tuned…."