How LINE Creative Lab Built an Adobe Express Integration with the Embed SDK

Discover how users of the number one messenger platform in Japan can create engaging ads with Adobe Express and learn about LINE’s experience of embedding Adobe Express functionalities.

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LINE is Japan’s largest social network. Around 96 million people (70 percent of Japan’s entire population, as of December 2023) use LINE, and it’s popular among all genders, ages, and occupations. Since its launch in 2011, the communication platform has grown into a diverse ecosystem.

As part of its various marketing solutions for businesses of all sizes, LY Corporation, the developer of LINE, offers a free service called LINE Creative Lab, which provides advertisers and owners of LINE official accounts with creative creation tools that help them easily produce effective designs for their marketing campaigns.

LINE Creative Lab features a wide variety of design templates that reflect the social network’s latest trends, and users can also find inspiration and tips. This makes it easy — especially for small and medium-sized businesses that may lack the resources or design expertise — to create engaging ads on their own.

LINE Creative Lab’s service is now also available as an Adobe Express integration for creators of all skill levels, so we caught up with Nam Hyun Jung, product manager at LINE Creative Lab, to find out about the team’s experience of building for the Adobe Express platform with the Adobe Express Embed SDK.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1iXDXkgjsUU

How the integration works

The LINE Creative Lab team chose Adobe Express because they identified it as a robust design tool that features more than just customizable templates. It serves as a valuable resource for small advertisers or LINE account owners, helping them overcome challenges in sourcing varied stock photos, videos, and music, as well as design elements.

“We created an Adobe Express integration with the Embed SDK to offer LINE Creative Lab users the opportunity to create more diverse creatives,” Nam explained. “Adobe’s extensive design templates and stock images as well as the various creative editing capabilities provide users with a wider range of creative production options.”

To create an ad and access more than 470 design templates, users simply select ‘Create with Adobe Express’ within LINE Creative Lab. Completed creatives are then saved and submitted directly as Line ads without having to leave LINE Creative Lab. Alternatively, users can search for and edit templates for LINE ads and LINE official accounts directly from Adobe Express.

In addition to LINE ads, users can also create “rich menu” and “rich message” designs for the LINE official accounts. Switching the “marketing channel” in the upper right corner of LINE Creative Lab to a LINE official account will launch the start menu.

Adobe Express templates (Japanese users only)

Japanese users can search for and edit templates for LINE ads and LINE official accounts directly from Adobe Express:

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LINE Creative Lab’s process of integrating Adobe Express

This was LINE Creative Lab’s first experience building an integration for another platform, and the team was impressed with how straightforward it was to install the Adobe Express Embed SDK. They found the SDK to be powerful and well-documented, and were able to seamlessly integrate it into their own platform.

The whole process of creating the Adobe Express integration took approximately 4 months from planning to final release. Whenever the team encountered difficulties, they were able to resolve them quickly with the active support from Adobe.

“The support we received throughout the integration process was exceptional,” Nam pointed out. “Each expert responded promptly to both technical and non-technical inquiries, and we especially appreciated being able to utilize video conferencing to resolve issues that could not be worked out through messaging alone.”

Comprehending the extensive feature set of Adobe Express initially posed some challenges for the team but Adobe’s support helped them navigate through them quickly and efficiently. They also learned that they can stay informed about all the latest Adobe Express updates, including enhancements to the Embed SDK, through the Adobe Express community, which will enable them to handle any issues more smoothly in the future.

Testing across multiple countries in particular required considerable time, but again help was at hand, and the LINE Creative Lab team could take advantage of numerous templates Adobe had specifically tailored for the Japanese market. Adobe Express also already offers services in Japanese and Taiwanese, which enhanced the collaboration. In particular, the Adobe Express Embed SDK enables developers to customize the locale during initialization.

As a result, the LINE Creative Lab team was able to complete a stable release of their integration within schedule.

Empowering LINE users with more editing capabilities

The Adobe Express integration has been particularly beneficial for LINE Official Account and LINE Ads owners: Adobe Express’s various templates and extensive stock imagery are helping them in creating rich advertising campaigns that effectively communicate with their customers. LINE Official Account and LINE Ads owners also appreciate the ability to customize designs freely with the templates that Adobe Express provides, which unlocks creative expression for all skill levels.

While Adobe Express’s generative AI capabilities, such as Text to Image, weren’t the primary reason for building the integration, significant anticipation for the powerful new technology in the market make it a compelling feature for LINE. The LINE Creative Lab team is therefore actively monitoring how many users of the Adobe Express integration will take advantage of the generative AI features.

This is just the start of the collaboration between Adobe and LY Corporation. We recently held a webinar to introduce LINE Official Account owners to the new Adobe Express integration and how to get the most out of it. Over the coming months there will be more mutual knowledge sharing between Adobe and LY Corporation to empower our respective users and grow our communities.

On June 5 at 2pm JST, for example, we will hold another webinar that will provide essential information about LINE ad creatives and demonstrate how to use LINE Creative Lab together with Adobe Express. Sign up here to participate for free.

Try the Adobe Express integration by creating a LINE Official Account or LINE Ads account and discover how to create ads for the social network with Adobe Express right inside of LINE Creative Lab.

To learn more about building Adobe Express integrations with the Embed SDK and get started yourself, visit our developer site. And to explore what’s new in the Adobe Express Embed SDK v4, check out the community page.