Adobe releases AI agents targeting B2B sales and marketing workflows

Adobe announced the general availability of three artificial intelligence agents specifically designed for business-to-business operations on October 9, 2025. The release introduces Audience Agent, Journey Agent, and Data Insights Agent, which target the complex decision-making processes characteristic of enterprise software and hardware purchases.

B2B buyers typically make purchase decisions through committee structures, bringing varied perspectives to consensus while navigating supplier sales processes and internal procurement procedures. Identifying decision makers who collectively authorize large purchases presents a persistent challenge for marketing and sales teams. The new agents aim to shorten these extended buying cycles through automated identification and engagement workflows.

The three agents now available operate within Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition. Cisco has been testing the agents across its sales and marketing operations. "We have been longtime users of Adobe Experience Cloud, where applications such as Journey Optimizer B2B Edition are enabling us to personalize customer experiences and drive pipeline for the business," stated Brett Rafuse, vice president of demand marketing at Cisco. "Adobe's AI agents will be another unlock for our organization. By shortening the time it takes to identify key decision makers and orchestrate compelling cross-channel journeys, we can boost account engagement and accelerate deal closure."

Technical architecture and capabilities

The Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator powers the three agents through reasoning and multi-agent collaboration frameworks. This orchestration layer enables the agents to function within established enterprise applications, allowing marketing and sales teams to implement targeted personalization at scale.

Audience Agent analyzes structured, unstructured, and first-party data sources including CRM profiles, marketing activity, and web content. The agent surfaces insights to help marketers define audiences aligned with specific objectives. It identifies buying group personas and uses first-party signals to recommend buying group members, then builds high-value buying groups for particular offerings. These buying groups can be deployed across omni-channel journeys to generate demand more effectively.

Journey Agent simplifies customer journey creation and orchestration across email, web, mobile, and additional channels. The agent constructs journeys based on defined goals and optimizes touchpoints by analyzing factors such as customer drop-off rates. This process uncovers insights that enable teams to refine interactions throughout the buying cycle.

Data Insights Agent operates through a conversational interface that expands access to cross-channel data analysis across buying groups and accounts. The agent enables wider participation from marketing, sales, and product team members in visualizing, forecasting, and addressing customer experience initiatives. This democratization of analytics represents a shift from specialist-dependent reporting to broader organizational access.

Upcoming capabilities

Adobe plans to release Account Qualification Agent for Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition in the near future. This agent will empower business development representatives to accelerate engagement and qualification processes. The system evaluates prospect needs, budget, authority, and timeline to determine valid sales opportunities while delivering summarized account insights. This automation streamlines workflows across research, outreach, and analytics functions.

Brand Concierge, an AI-first application, will transform casual browsing into personalized conversational experiences. The Product Advisor Agent within this application supports brand engagement and accelerates product discovery journeys. Interactions are tailored to individual preferences across text, voice, and image modalities. B2B teams can facilitate meeting bookings with business development representatives through this platform, which delivers AI-driven recommendations and comparisons.

Business development representatives can then conduct research, qualification, and engagement activities before and after meetings using the Account Qualification Agent in Journey Optimizer B2B Edition. This integration creates a continuous workflow from initial customer interest through qualified opportunity development.

Industry context and market significance

The announcement follows Adobe's September 10, 2025 launch of the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, which established an AI platform for managing agents from Adobe and third-party ecosystems. That launch included six specialized agents within Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Journey Optimizer, and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.

Over 70% of eligible Adobe Experience Platform customers already use Adobe's AI Assistant, which serves as the conversational interface for interacting with agents across Adobe and third-party systems. Major brands including The Hershey Company, Lenovo, Merkle, Wegmans Food Markets, and Wilson Company have been working with Adobe's agentic AI offerings.

The focus on B2B workflows addresses specific market demands. Marketing automation has become critical as agencies seek to increase client portfolios by 83% without expanding teams, according to September 2025 research. Digital advertising agencies want account managers to handle 64 clients instead of 35, while 64% of strategists now manage multiple channels.

Investment in agentic AI capabilities has accelerated significantly. McKinsey data indicates $1.1 billion in equity investment flowed into agentic AI in 2024, with job postings related to this technology increasing 985% from 2023 to 2024. The consulting firm's Technology Trends Outlook 2025 identifies agentic AI as artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomous planning and execution, representing a shift from chatbot interactions to virtual coworkers managing complex workflows independently.

B2B marketing transformation

Trust has emerged as the primary business strategy in B2B marketing, with 94% of marketing professionals agreeing that building trust represents the most important factor for achieving brand success, according to LinkedIn and Ipsos research from July 2025. The agents Adobe released aim to support this trust-building process through more efficient identification and engagement of decision makers.

B2B marketing teams face data quality challenges that complicate automation efforts. Research released September 4, 2025 found that 45% of marketing data used for business decisions is incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated. The Audience Agent's ability to analyze multiple data sources addresses this challenge by synthesizing insights across structured and unstructured information.

The emphasis on conversational interfaces reflects broader adoption patterns. Adverity launched Adverity Intelligence on September 12, 2025, with conversational AI that allows teams to interact directly with data. LiveRamp introduced agentic orchestration on October 1, 2025, enabling autonomous AI agents to access identity resolution, segmentation, activation, and measurement tools.

Implementation considerations

The agents operate within existing Adobe enterprise applications rather than requiring separate platform implementations. This integration approach allows organizations to deploy AI capabilities within established workflows. Marketing and sales teams can access agent functionality through the Adobe Experience Platform, which serves as the foundation for customer experience orchestration.

The reasoning engine within Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator interprets user intent from natural language prompts to dynamically determine which agents should be activated. This contextual understanding enables goal-oriented automated actions while supporting human oversight through a "human-in-the-loop" approach.

Organizations implementing the agents will need to ensure data quality across CRM systems, marketing platforms, and web properties. The effectiveness of buying group identification and journey optimization depends on the accuracy and completeness of underlying data sources. Teams should establish governance frameworks for agent-generated recommendations and maintain strategic oversight of automated processes.

The multimodal capabilities planned for Brand Concierge require integration across text, voice, and image processing systems. Organizations will need technical infrastructure supporting these varied input methods while maintaining consistent brand experiences across interaction modes.

Competitive landscape

Adobe's B2B agent release follows a pattern of enterprise software providers adding agentic capabilities to marketing platforms. Amazon introduced agentic AI capabilities across its seller platform on September 17, 2025, transforming marketplace management from passive assistance to active business partnership. The system monitors accounts, optimizes inventory, and manages advertising campaigns while maintaining seller control over strategic decisions.

Google unveiled a framework for next-generation AI agent systems, providing technical analysis of core components including model layers, orchestration layers, and tools layers that enable AI agents to interact with external systems. These parallel developments indicate industry-wide movement toward agentic automation in marketing operations.

The agents Adobe released focus specifically on B2B buying committees and multi-stakeholder decision processes, differentiating them from general marketing automation tools. The emphasis on buying group identification and journey orchestration addresses challenges particular to enterprise sales cycles, where consensus-building among diverse decision makers extends purchasing timelines.

Market implications

The general availability of B2B-specific agents represents a maturation of agentic AI from experimental technology to production-ready business tools. Organizations can now deploy autonomous agents for core business functions including audience development, journey creation, and analytics.

The conversational interface for Data Insights Agent expands data analysis access beyond technical specialists. Marketing, sales, and product teams can query cross-channel data through natural language, reducing dependence on data science resources. This democratization aligns with broader trends toward accessible analytics that eliminate barriers between business users and insights.

The integration of agents within category-leading enterprise applications provides immediate access to existing customer data and workflows. Organizations using Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition can implement agent capabilities without platform migrations or extensive integration projects.

The upcoming Account Qualification Agent addresses a specific bottleneck in B2B sales processes. Business development representatives spend significant time on initial qualification activities, evaluating prospect needs, budget, authority, and timeline. Automating this qualification workflow allows representatives to focus on relationship building and complex problem solving rather than information gathering.

Brand Concierge's planned multimodal capabilities reflect changing buyer preferences for varied interaction methods. The ability to engage through text, voice, or images accommodates different contexts and user preferences while maintaining consistent brand experiences. This flexibility becomes particularly relevant as B2B buyers increasingly expect consumer-grade digital experiences.

Performance expectations

Cisco's implementation provides an early indicator of agent impact on B2B operations. The company expects the agents to boost account engagement and accelerate deal closure by reducing the time required to identify decision makers and orchestrate cross-channel journeys. These efficiency gains directly affect pipeline velocity and revenue generation.

The agents enable marketing teams to spend less time on manual tasks and more time building customer connections. Audience Agent automates buying group construction that previously required manual research and analysis. Journey Agent eliminates repetitive campaign setup and optimization work. Data Insights Agent reduces time spent generating reports and visualizations.

The effectiveness of these agents will depend on data quality, organizational processes, and strategic oversight. Teams will need to monitor agent recommendations, validate buying group compositions, and refine journey parameters based on performance outcomes. The "human-in-the-loop" approach allows organizations to maintain control while benefiting from automation.

Adobe indicated commitment to expanding agent capabilities beyond the initial release. The company characterized this launch as the beginning of helping businesses work smarter, deliver better experiences, and grow stronger relationships in what it termed a "rapidly changing attention-based economy."

Timeline

• September 10, 2025: Adobe launches AI agents for business customer experience through Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator
• September 12, 2025: Adverity debuts AI-powered intelligence layer for marketing analytics automation
• September 17, 2025: Amazon introduces agentic AI across seller platform
• October 1, 2025: LiveRamp debuts agentic AI capabilities including orchestration and AI-powered segmentation
• October 9, 2025: Adobe announces general availability of three B2B AI agents (Audience Agent, Journey Agent, Data Insights Agent)
• Coming soon: Adobe Account Qualification Agent and Brand Concierge application

Summary

Who: Adobe announced new AI agents for B2B marketing and sales teams, with Cisco serving as an early customer testing the technology. Brett Rafuse, vice president of demand marketing at Cisco, provided feedback on the implementation.

What: Adobe released three AI agents on October 9, 2025: Audience Agent for analyzing data and building buying groups, Journey Agent for creating and optimizing customer journeys, and Data Insights Agent for conversational data analysis. Two additional capabilities are coming soon: Account Qualification Agent for business development representatives and Brand Concierge for personalized customer experiences.

When: The general availability announcement occurred on October 9, 2025, following Adobe's September 10, 2025 launch of the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator. The agents are now available within Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition.

Where: The agents operate within Adobe's enterprise applications, specifically Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition. They are powered by the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, which enables reasoning and multi-agent collaboration.

Why: The agents address challenges B2B marketing and sales teams face when identifying decision makers and maintaining engagement throughout lengthy purchasing cycles. Committee-based buying decisions in B2B environments require influencing multiple stakeholders with different perspectives, making automation of audience identification and journey orchestration valuable for shortening sales cycles and accelerating deal closure.