Shantanu Narayen Chairman, President and CEO of Adobe, at the 2018 Adobe Summit. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Invision for Adobe/AP Images)

Adobe has been selling software to consumer marketing teams for decades, and it will start butting heads with enterprise marketing software vendors following the close of its $4.75 billion acquisition of Marketo, announced Thursday.

Marketo’s software-as-a-service, delivered through Google Cloud, allows teams to manage digital marketing campaigns and track their performance. The company, which recently hired Seattle’s Mika Yamamoto as its president, was acquired by a private equity firm in 2016 for $1.8 billion before turning into what CNBC believes is the largest acquisition in Adobe’s 36-year history.

Adobe is best known for products like Photoshop and Illustrator that marketing teams use to create their advertising, but it also offers several marketing services geared around campaign analysis and delivery. Marketo and its 1,300 employees will become part of Adobe’s Digital Experience business, the companies said, with Marketo CEO Steve Lucas reporting to executive vice president and general manager Brad Rencher.

The deal will give attendees of Salesforce’s huge Dreamforce conference in San Francisco next week something to talk about as they wait in line for their Ubers to navigate the legendary traffic caused by the event. Salesforce’s marketing services have been one of the fastest-growing parts of its arsenal over the past few years, and its Marketing Cloud and Pardot services compete with Marketo. SAP, Oracle, and HubSpot also offer products and services in this area.

The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of Adobe’s fiscal year, which ends on November 30th.

[Editor’s Note: Salesforce is a GeekWire annual sponsor.]

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