Adobe, LinkedIn launch free AI course for marketers falling behind
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — LinkedIn job postings requiring AI literacy have risen 113% year-over-year — yet only 4% of marketing professionals globally have added AI skills to their profiles, a gap Adobe and LinkedIn are addressing with a new free course on LinkedIn Learning, Fortune reports.
Marketing’s AI skills gap is widening faster than the profession is responding
“It’s mission-critical that all marketers embrace AI,” said Jessica Jensen, Chief Marketing Officer at LinkedIn.
The new program, ‘AI Essentials for Marketers,’ covers four learning paths — digital marketing, content and creative, social and communications, and data and analytics — with each path requiring 2 to 3 hours to complete.
Anthropic’s research estimates that 65% of marketing tasks are exposed to AI displacement or transformation — a figure that frames the Adobe and LinkedIn course as a response to urgent structural risk, not optional professional development.
The course is designed for those who find AI adoption overwhelming
“The challenge is that AI is everywhere, but knowing how to learn it in meaningful ways is still difficult,” said Rachel Thornton, Chief Marketing Officer for Enterprise at Adobe.
The course addresses practical skills including audience segmentation, message testing, campaign building, and ROI analytics across the four paths.
‘Get your hands dirty. Experiment. Create. Build agents,’ said Jensen, adding that marketers should ‘show real examples of how you’re using AI.’
Thornton said professionals who are ‘excited’ and ‘energized about change’ are developing the skill sets that will serve them well regardless of what tools emerge next.
The program is free and available on LinkedIn Learning, making it accessible to professionals at organizations without dedicated AI training budgets.
With 113% growth in AI-literacy job requirements year-over-year and only 4% of marketing professionals having updated their profiles to reflect AI capability, the majority of the global marketing workforce is already behind the benchmark employers are setting.
For BPO providers and offshore marketing teams, the Adobe and LinkedIn course is a direct signal about what marketing clients now expect of their vendors.
The 65% AI exposure rate for marketing tasks means content production, social media management, campaign analytics, and audience segmentation — all functions frequently outsourced — are under active AI pressure.
Offshore marketing BPO firms that build AI tool proficiency into their standard delivery workflows will retain client relevance; those that don’t face substitution from AI-augmented in-house teams.
