Why It’s Important
Adobe’s acquisition of Semrush is a further sign the battle for ‘creative suites’ is moving beyond content creation to encompass end-to-end content lifecycle orchestration.
The primary catalyst for this acquisition is the disruptive rise of Generative AI. As consumers increasingly turn to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google Gemini for direct answers and recommendations, brands risk becoming ‘invisible in the new discovery engine’ if their content is not optimised for these new interfaces.
Adobe, historically strong in creation and experience orchestration, lacked deep, native capabilities in discovery, instead working closely with other services. With the acquisition of Semrush, Adobe hopes to close this gap by gaining Semrush’s decade of SEO expertise and, critically, native, leading-edge GEO capabilities. GEO focuses on optimising brand content visibility and representation within AI-generated responses and summaries, a different challenge to traditional keyword-based SEO.
The acquisition provides several strategic benefits for Adobe. Firstly, it allows Adobe to offer an all-in-one marketing tool that sits below its already powerful suite of digital marketing and ecommerce solutions. Secondly, Adobe gains a critical data asset. Integrating Semrush’s keyword data and competitive intelligence with Adobe Analytics and the new Brand Concierge tool turns brand monitoring into actionable optimisation.
Who’s Impacted
- Chief Marketing Officer (CMO): Must shift the marketing mindset and resource allocation from purely SEO to GEO to ensure brand visibility within LLM and AI search responses.
- Chief Information Officer (CIO): Needs to factor the Semrush platform’s integration into the Adobe Experience Cloud into the enterprise architecture roadmap and begin assessing the resulting opportunities for unified analytics and content supply chain automation.
- Content/Creative Director: Will see the creative process fundamentally change, as SEO and GEO insights become live, real-time requirements inside design tools (e.g., Adobe Express).
- Director of Marketing Operations: Must evaluate the potential to consolidate spending and simplify vendor management by moving from disparate point solutions for SEO/GEO to the new, integrated Adobe platform.
- ICT Procurement Manager: Should prepare for licensing discussions that integrate creative, experience, and optimisation tools, potentially requiring a new model for platform-based software procurement.
What’s Next
- Marketing and creative teams should explore new GEO strategy (thinking beyond just Semrush and Adobe).
- Initiate a content audit to assess which authoritative content is most likely to be cited by LLMs, focusing on semantic clarity and explicit authority.
- Task the analytics team to investigate the capability of tracking AI-sourced traffic and customer journey attribution within current and future marketing platforms.
