With evolving customer expectations and stricter privacy laws across Asia Pacific, the pressure is on brands to deliver personalised digital experiences—without breaching compliance or losing consumer trust. In an exclusive interview with Shashank Sharma, Senior Director of Adobe Digital Experience Business for Southeast Asia and Korea, he shared how Adobe is helping businesses across the region rise to these challenges.
Data privacy and trust are baked into Adobe’s entire process
As countries like Singapore and India tighten data protection laws, businesses must ensure that their marketing practices align with compliance requirements. According to Sharma, Adobe does not treat privacy as a mere feature or a compliance checkbox. Instead, it is integrated into the entire development and customer experience lifecycle. Adobe follows a Responsible AI framework guided by three pillars: accountability, responsibility, and transparency. Every product and solution is developed under this framework, from ideation and engineering through to deployment.
When it comes to content creation, Adobe ensures that anything generated using AI is commercially safe. There is clear provenance around the content’s origin, and credit is given where due. This approach safeguards against copyright issues and builds trust with creators and consumers. Meanwhile, on the data front, Adobe prioritises first-party data—the information brands collect directly from their audiences. By grounding personalisation in this type of data, companies can ensure accuracy and transparency while avoiding the risks associated with third-party data.
Sharma emphasised that this is not a “balancing act” between compliance and personalisation—it is a seamless integration. Adobe ensures that all its solutions enable customers to scale their marketing efforts responsibly. At every stage, whether developing algorithms or activating campaigns, Adobe maintains rigorous control over how data is handled. This enables brands to build meaningful relationships while remaining aligned with privacy regulations such as Singapore’s PDPA and India’s DPDP Act.
Trust, ultimately, remains the cornerstone. Consumers are increasingly aware of how their data is used, and Adobe’s transparency-first approach gives brands the assurance they need. For businesses in Southeast Asia and Korea, where regulatory frameworks are rapidly evolving, Adobe’s end-to-end governance model is helping bridge the gap between customer expectations and legal requirements.
Personalisation without complexity through real-time localisation
For APAC brands, delivering hyper-local digital experiences at scale is one of the toughest challenges. Many businesses operate in multi-market, multilingual environments, where every audience segment expects content tailored to their needs. According to Sharma, Adobe views this not just as a localisation challenge, but as an opportunity to create unique experiences for every individual. The goal is not merely to translate content—but to deliver relevance, no matter where the customer is located.
Adobe addresses this challenge through three core dimensions. The first is real-time identity. The company builds unique, constantly updated profiles for each customer using first-party data, enabling brands to act based on the most current understanding of each individual. These profiles are “hydrated” in real-time, drawing on behavioural and transactional data to support timely, data-driven decisions.
The second dimension focuses on content. Adobe uses its advanced generative AI capabilities to support scalable, high-quality content creation. Rather than expecting internal teams to produce localised content for every market manually, Adobe’s AI tools generate brand-safe content variations at scale. This allows companies to personalise communications for millions of users without overwhelming creative teams or compromising quality.
The third dimension is orchestration. Once the identity and content are prepared, Adobe Experience Cloud enables brands to deliver consistent messaging across all web, mobile, social, or email channels. This allows businesses to tailor content to specific segments while maintaining global brand consistency. For brands in Southeast Asia and Korea, this framework ensures both local relevance and operational efficiency across diverse markets.
Preparing for a cookieless future with first-party and second-party data
The gradual deprecation of third-party cookies is transforming how digital marketing is done across the globe, and APAC is no exception. As browsers like Chrome move to phase out third-party tracking, marketers must rethink how they collect insights and engage their audiences. Sharma highlighted that Adobe is well ahead of the curve, having long-prioritised strategies based on first-party and second-party data.
Adobe has consistently advocated for brands to take control of their data. Sharma pointed out that businesses that collect and manage their first-party data will gain the most accurate and resilient marketing strategies.
First-party data provides a deterministic view of the customer, enabling more relevant engagement while maintaining strict compliance with privacy regulations.
Beyond first-party data, Adobe also sees increasing value in second-party data partnerships. Sharma cited collaborations between banks, travel companies, telcos and insurance providers. These partnerships offer mutual benefits through data enrichment and better audience targeting within a compliant, secure framework. Adobe’s technology supports these partnerships with tools for safe audience sharing and segmentation.
This shift prepares businesses for a future without cookies and enhances the authenticity of customer relationships. By being transparent about data collection and usage, brands can foster greater trust, especially in the privacy-sensitive markets across APAC. Adobe’s solutions allow businesses to adapt to change and use it to strengthen engagement and brand loyalty.
Scaling content creation through generative AI and agentic tools
In today’s fast-paced digital environment, brands must quickly produce high-quality content. Adobe addresses this demand with generative AI and agentic technologies that enable creative teams to scale without losing their edge. According to Sharma, these capabilities are embedded across Adobe’s product suite—from ideation and creation to content activation and performance analysis.
Adobe’s long-standing reputation in content creation gives it a unique advantage. Designers and creators have trusted Adobe tools like Photoshop and Premiere Pro for decades. With generative AI built-in, these tools have become even more powerful. Users can automatically generate variations, adapt existing assets, and quickly explore creative directions. Rather than replacing human creativity, Adobe’s AI tools serve as copilot—enhancing efficiency while keeping creative control in human hands.
A good example shared by Sharma is the use of brand-owned content libraries to train Adobe’s generative AI models. With this approach, companies can produce new, brand-aligned content that matches their visual and messaging standards—without starting from scratch. This significantly reduces the time and effort needed for content production while maintaining consistency across campaigns.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) complements this process by managing content workflows and activating campaigns across all channels. Whether it’s a website, email, or social media platform, AEM enables the automated delivery of content to the right audience at the right time. For brands in APAC—where customer segments are highly diverse—this level of personalisation and automation helps ensure content remains relevant, impactful, and efficient across multiple markets.
Why Adobe’s approach matters more than ever in APAC
In a business where customer expectations, data privacy laws, and marketing technology are evolving rapidly, Adobe offers a practical and future-ready roadmap. Its focus on responsible AI, real-time personalisation, and robust first-party data strategies positions the company as a critical partner for brands aiming to stay competitive while building consumer trust.
APAC is incredibly diverse, with wide-ranging regulations, languages, and digital maturity levels. Adobe’s solutions are built with this complexity in mind. By combining enterprise-grade technology with the agility to adapt locally, Adobe enables brands to deliver consistently high-quality digital experiences across multiple markets.
Sharma’s insights highlight how Adobe is enabling purposeful transformation, such as supporting brands in moving beyond third-party cookies, creating personalised experiences, or scaling content through AI, Adobe provides tools to make marketing more effective, ethical, and user-centric.
As digital transformation accelerates across Asia Pacific, Adobe’s blueprint—anchored in innovation and privacy—offers businesses a clear path forward. It is a strategy designed to meet today’s challenges and drive success in a future where personalisation, compliance, and creativity go hand in hand.
