Adobe launches ad making tool for small businesses

Adobe has unveiled Adobe Express for ads, a solution that aims to make it faster and easier for small businesses to create ads for social media channels in Adobe Express. The solution supports creative workflows for popular ad platforms such as Google, LinkedIn, Meta, and TikTok, with Amazon soon to follow.

Citing Nielsen data, the company states that 50% of advertising ROI is driven by the quality of the creative. Adobe Express for ads leverages social safe zones feature in Adobe Express to design creatives that comply with ad platform guidelines. The Metricool and Bitly add-ons for Adobe Express enable tracking how the content is performing. Social safe zones provide built-in guides tailored to top platforms, so that key visuals and messages can be placed for maximum engagement and performance. Adobe has made safe zones for Stories and Reel ads (Meta) and LinkedIn video ads available in Adobe Express. The company plans to add new formats soon.

The solution offers access to thousands of free, professionally designed templates suitable for leading ad platforms. It features focused workflows and drag-and-drop tools to customise text, images, and layouts. Built in AI aims to help creators generate content ideas, remove backgrounds, generate images or video. The solution integrates with creative tools like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, and access to a large library of assets and templates curated by design professionals.

Adobe Express for ads allows for resizing and reformatting of ads to fit any platform. Custom Brand Kits enable locking brand elements for a consistent look and feel. Adobe's recently announced AI-powered video creation capabilities will also be available to users. AI-powered Clip Maker feature can help cut video footages into short clips, and Firefly-powered Generate Video feature allows for generation of customised and commercially safe b-roll and background footage.

Adobe Express includes Google Performance Max templates, which remove guesswork in asset creation by letting users insert their own videos, images, or offers and export directly to Google Ads. It also incorporates video and image ads for LinkedI. Video templates can be optimised for storytelling and be exported to LinkedIn ads accounts. It includes 'TikTok Symphony Assistant' add-on that supports creation of trending business content and includes music from the Commercial Music Library. From 16 June, users can export videos directly to TikTok Ads Manager.

Adobe Express for ads includes Metricool and Bitly add-ons to allow for measuring content performance. Metricool add-on provides data on top-performing posts, hashtags, and engagement across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, X, and Google Business, etc. Users can analyse competitor profiles to identify trends and gaps to refine strategies. While all these features are available in Adobe Express for ads, the add-ons can be downloaded from the Adobe Express add-on marketplace.