Phil Koolen, director of account service at Anchora has spent the last three days immersing himself in Vegas for the Adobe Summit. Luckily for you, our on-the-ground spy, has been feeding back intel to B&T to keep you guys in the know.
Day three of Adobe Summit has a particular energy…
Part hangover, part clarity. Half the crowd has already headed to the airport. The ones who remain tend to be the most invested, and the conversations get more honest. For me, the clearest thinking didn’t come from a keynote, but from the night before.
Adobe Sneaks is always the highlight, and this year didn’t disappoint. The annual showcase of experimental projects from Adobe’s research and engineering teams produced some genuinely exciting concepts.
Project FaceOff simulated A/B tests before they go live, using AI to predict which design variant will perform best. A “pre game” for experimentation that could save weeks of testing time.
Project Page Turner went further, generating personalised website experiences in real time based on how a visitor is actually browsing, not just who they are on paper. The Vitamix demo was compelling: a page assembled in under a second, tailored to a specific intent, pulling real product content dynamically.
Project Wispr took a fully designed email from Adobe Express and converted it into production ready, personalised code without writing a line.
And Project Asset Amplifier turned a single creative asset into a full suite of audience specific content, websites, social posts, even a children’s bedtime story. All from the same source material.
What made Sneaks feel different this year was the announcement that all seven concepts would be immediately available for customers to test via Adobe.com. Last year two projects moved from Sneaks to product within a month. The message was clear: the gap between “what’s possible” and “what’s available” is closing fast.
The night concluded with the big bash, held at Area15. A sprawling carnival meets haunted house complex with food trucks, performers and experiences around every corner. On brand, slightly overwhelming, and genuinely memorable.
But stepping back from the spectacle, the thing that stayed with me is simpler and more uncomfortable than any product demo.
Agentic AI is not coming. It’s here. And the gap between organisations that are ready for it and those that aren’t is already opening up.
The companies that will win aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated tech stacks. They’re the ones that have done the unglamorous work, structured their data properly, connected their tools, fixed their governance, and built teams that can actually move at the speed the market now demands.
The LLM visibility conversation is a good example. Brands that start optimising for AI driven discovery now are building a top-of-funnel advantage that compounds. Brands still running traditional SEO playbooks and ignoring how LLMs surface recommendations are quietly haemorrhaging relevance. That money doesn’t disappear, it goes to whoever got there first.
The harder truth is that most organisations are still getting in their own way. Marketing teams waiting three months for campaign data.
Siloed business units that can’t agree on what an audience is. Governance processes that were designed for a world that no longer exists. Adobe can sell you the tools, but no software solves a culture problem.
That was the real through-line of Summit 2026. Not the demos, not the announcements, not even the Jensen Huang cameo. The organisations that will thrive in the agentic era are the ones willing to look honestly at how they’re structured and admit that what worked last time won’t work this time.
The tsunami has arrived. The only question is whether you’re building on high ground.
Didn’t find time to shoot off to Vegas for the week? Don’t stress because Koolen has been on the ground for B&T for the last three days reporting on everything you need to know about the Adobe Summit.
