Australian marketing professionals are anticipating a significant increase in demand for content, with new research revealing they expect requirements to grow by more than fivefold by 2027.
The findings come from a survey of more than 400 marketers in Australia, which highlights the mounting pressure on teams balancing consumer expectations for personalised, multi-format content with tight limits on time, budgets, and resourcing. The study, conducted by Adobe in partnership with Advanis, shows that demand in Australia is among the steepest globally, ranking equal second with the United States behind India over the past two years.
Surging demand
According to the research, 86% of Australian marketers have seen increased content demand in the past two years. More than half reported the demand has grown at least five times. Looking ahead, 63% of those surveyed anticipate their content needs will multiply fivefold or more by 2027.
Personalised content requirements stand out as the primary factor, cited by 61% of respondents. The rise of hybrid customer journeys (49%) and a notable shift toward video and audio formats (42%) were also identified as key drivers. Over half (56%) of marketers said their audiences now expect fresh content weekly or even several times per week, further compressing production timelines.
These mounting pressures are prompting a transformation in how marketing teams approach production, management, and measurement of content. Nearly half (48%) admit they are finding it challenging to meet the escalating demand.
Operational challenges
The study highlighted that a significant proportion (78%) of organisations generate more than 1,000 brand assets annually, with over a third (35%) churning out between 10,000 and 500,000 assets. Workflow bottlenecks are a recurring issue, as most teams involve more than 20 approvers in the review process, often requiring three to six rounds of approval before content is released. As a result, 46% of marketers spend more than 40% of their time on administrative, review, and approval tasks, limiting focus on core content creation and strategic planning.
Participants pointed to other barriers impeding their ability to keep pace: budget shortfalls (46%), lack of speed (44%) and limited staff (31%) were the most commonly cited. Additionally, the vast majority (83%) lack effective methods for measuring content performance. To address these challenges, marketers say they are focusing on closer collaboration between creative and marketing teams (43%), data-driven content strategies (42%), and increased use of generative AI (40%).
"Marketers are under immense pressure to deliver personalised, impactful content at speed and scale. To keep up, teams must rethink their operations, unify creative and marketing workflows, and leverage AI to accelerate ideation, production, and personalisation."
This was the assessment from Duncan Egan, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing, Adobe Asia Pacific and Japan.
AI adoption
To help meet the demand, most marketing teams are turning to AI. The study found that 78% already use AI to support content production and workflows, while 82% plan to expand AI's role within the next year. Even so, concerns remain around content quality (56%) and compliance or data privacy (48%) when deploying generative AI in business-critical settings.
"As brands embrace AI for content production, they need models that they can trust. That is why we train our Adobe Firefly models on licensed, high-quality data to ensure commercial safety. We also enable organisations to train their own custom models so they can create on-brand content a scale."
Egan's comments reflect the ongoing importance of trust and security as AI tools become more prevalent in marketing workflows.
Customer experiences
Juli Anderson, Director of Brand & Creative for Australia and New Zealand and Global Head of Brand Programs at AECOM, described the impact of growing content demands on workflow and creativity, saying, "We are a very large Fortune 500 company with 55,000 people globally. So as you can imagine, there were a lot of templates in the past, roaming around different hard drives on different servers. The other pain point was our workflow was quite convoluted. So we had comms people, marketing people, designers, and then our internal stakeholders requesting things like social media tiles that we needed to streamline. We needed to work out how we would make this content a lot more consistent and on-brand and polished, but also evolve these templates so that they would have those cultural nuances as part of the process. Adobe Express solved both of those for us."
On the subject of AI-powered creativity, Anderson added, "The creative industry and the knowledge that we have as a design discipline means that we have that element of taste, being able to understand what works, what looks good, what is going to make someone feel, what is going to connect with a human being. I think AI-powered creativity in the future is really about leaning into the tools, but making sure that we are using our human creativity to make the right decisions about the content that is eventually delivered."
On preparing for the future, she said, "There's a few things that we need to do to prepare for the future. I think it's really about making sure we're mentoring the next generation of designers so that they feel comfortable with things like pitching, with leading, with understanding data so that they're equipped to take on the challenges of the future."
James Courtney-Prior, Head of Creative at Urbis, commented on the impact of AI for creativity, stating, "Using AI to remove or reduce the administrative tasks, those operational things, just creates more space to be creative. On several projects, we've used it to generate copy really fast and get some ideas on the table. And it's raw. It's just a concept that allows us to move quickly based on what a client's given us in terms of their briefing or their aspirations. We can quickly turn around and go, 'Is it like this?' - sense check - and then we can start designing with purpose."
Regarding future skills, Courtney-Prior noted, "Individuals, particularly juniors, want to know what their niche is or what they're good at, and it feels like being good at everything or having a go at everything, is possibly more important at this stage. You need a real growth mindset I think to succeed in the future."
Stefan Mitchell, Head of Video Content for News & Sport at Nine, highlighted AI's effect on content production speed. He observed, "In sport, the impact of AI is real for us. Being able to cut down an 80-minute NRL game into a five-minute highlight. Previously, it was one person's job. They had to sit there and watch the whole game, cut all the bits up, edit it together and publish it. So that will take two hours plus. Now, with AI, as soon as the game's over, there's a five-minute highlight reel ready to go based on the inputs we give it."
Mitchell added, "Our philosophy towards AI is that it has to start with human and end with human. For a leader in a creative industry who leverages the power of AI is – if that is applicable to your industry – ensuring that that philosophy is followed. We cannot rely solely on AI to output creativity or to speed up efficiency at the expense of the human workforce without understanding why and understanding how to drive it from start to finish. Not just how it works and its benefits, but how a human and how people on your team can really get the most out of it in an accountable way."
Asked about future skills requirements, Mitchell commented, "I think what's really important for people working in creative teams, factoring in AI, but also without it, is being multiskilled. In this day and age ... no longer is it acceptable just to be an editor or just to be a cinematographer or just to be a producer. I think for what I do in the world I work in, being multiskilled is really important, and part of that now is AI. So I think it's crucial for creative leaders, or for leaders in industries that would benefit from AI, [to have an] understanding [of] a really macro view of workflow. Understanding how it's going to be used, understanding how it can benefit editing, graphic design, all sorts of post-production elements, that whole view of being able to understand everything is what's needed."
Global context
The Australian study is part of a worldwide examination of changing demands in marketing, spanning 2,800 professionals from six countries, including the United States, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The data reflects widespread changes across industries as marketing leaders look toward strategies and technology that can cope with rapidly increasing content needs while maintaining quality, consistency and compliance.
