Wired for What's Next: AI, MarTech, and the Future of Marketing Performance (In-Person Only)

OPENING REMARKS

John Hardy

Senior Vice President, Marketing Technology ANA

OPENING KEYNOTE: CLARITY IN THE CLOUD - LEADING WITH CONFIDENCE IN AN AI-TRANSFORMED MARKETING LANDSCAPE

The promise of AI in marketing has never been greater, nor has the noise. Marketers today face an overwhelming array of tools, platforms, and vendors, each claiming to be the solution to complexity. The real leadership challenge isn't finding the technology. It's knowing what to choose, how to govern it, and how to move with speed without losing control.

In this opening keynote, Elspeth Rollert draws on her experience building The Marketing Cloud, a platform purpose-built to help marketers cut through the complexity of today's fragmented martech ecosystem and focus on impact, not tool management, to share her unfiltered POV on where AI is delivering and where it's overpromising. She'll address the governance imperative, the case for consolidation over accumulation, and what it truly means to build a marketing organization that moves with both speed and purpose. 

Elspeth Rollert

CEO The Marketing Cloud

SESSION 1

SESSION 2

DEMYSTIFYING AGENTS IN ADOBE CX ENTERPRISE, AND ELSEWHERE

Adobe's AI strategy has been unfolding and pivoting, just like the rest of the industry. From Sensei to Agent Orchestrator to CX Enterprise Coworker, it's a moving target, and sometimes tough to keep up with. Couple that with the shift in pricing models from seat-based to token-based, and it's a lot to think about. In this session, Chris Vitti, Senior Director and Head of Marketing Technology at The Cigna Group, will give attendees an enterprise perspective on this, a breakdown of use cases and maturity level, tips for navigating in highly-regulated industries, and a glimpse of complementary vendor agents in the mix.

Chris Vitti

Senior Director and Head of Marketing Technology The Cigna Group

ANA AMPLIFY - Build Better Buyers: Eliminating MarTech Friction Between Buyers and Sellers

Every year, millions of dollars in marketing technology investments are compromised before they begin, the result of poorly structured RFPs, misaligned vendor evaluations, and procurement processes that create friction rather than clarity. Build Better Buyers is a new ANA initiative designed to fix this. Spanning the full market, buy side and sell side alike, the program equips both marketers and technology providers with better tools, shared standards, and practical frameworks for running more effective MarTech evaluations. The goal: reduce the friction that slows deals, distorts decisions, and undermines the value of technology investments on both sides of the table.

Presented by:

SESSION 5

PANEL DISCUSSION - MARKETING TECHNOLOGY IN THE AGE OF AI: WHAT’S WORKING, WHAT’S NOT, AND WHAT’S NEXT

Marketing technology leaders are navigating one of the most consequential inflection points in the history of the discipline. The promise of AI is real, but so is the complexity of integrating it into legacy stacks, existing workflows, and under-resourced teams. This panel brings together senior MarTech practitioners to share what they're actually doing: how they're evaluating and deploying AI tools, redesigning operations around intelligent automation, and building team capabilities in an environment where the skill requirements are changing faster than the talent supply. From stack rationalization to prompt engineering to governance frameworks, these leaders will cut through the hype and share hard-won lessons from the front lines. Whether you're just starting your AI integration journey or looking to accelerate it, this conversation will leave you with concrete perspective and actionable takeaways.

Facilitated by:

ANA AMPLIFY – THE B2B MARTECH PLAYBOOK: BUILDING A HIGH-PERFORMING GROWTH ENGINE

The ANA and McKinsey are partnering to develop The B2B CMO's Playbook for Marketing Technology, a practical guide designed to help marketing leaders build high-performing MarTech operations that drive growth, improve efficiency, and create better customer experiences. Covering key areas such as go-to-market orchestration, customer data and technology strategy, AI governance, measurement, content operations, and digital buyer experience, the playbook will provide a roadmap for turning technology investments into business impact.

In this session, ANA's John Hardy and McKinsey's Sean Flavin will share early insights from the playbook and discuss how leading B2B organizations are modernizing their marketing technology ecosystems to drive performance and scale. Attendees will gain practical strategies for building a more effective, agile, and future-ready marketing organization.

Presented by:

SESSION 8

MASTERCLASS: BEHIND THE PROMPT – HOW AI VISIBILITY IS REWRITING THE RULES OF SEARCH

AI is the new shelf, and for B2B, it is moving faster than most marketing organizations realize. Buyers are running discovery, vendor shortlisting, and category education inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI-powered search before a single form is filled. This session unpacks what is actually happening inside large language models when a B2B buyer asks for a recommendation, what separates the brands winning AI visibility from those quietly losing share, and the organizational moves CMOs need to make in the next two quarters. We will close with a candid fireside on budgets, measurement, and the AI advertising era now forming inside ChatGPT and Google.

Jon Werther

Head of US Business Brandlight Inc.

CLOSING REMARKS

John Hardy

SVP Marketing Technology ANA