While brands agree images and video are key to building trust and credibility online, Cloudinary’s first global digital asset management (DAM) survey reveals they face major bottlenecks when trying to scale, personalize and collaborate efficiently across teams. The independent survey, commissioned by Cloudinary, found that most brands (57%) use 2-3 DAM solutions, and are hamstrung by integration, workflow, collaboration and post-production issues. 86% consider DAM integrability with other solutions in the tech stack extremely or very important and are counting on automation and generative AI to help them overcome these challenges. Learn more in today’s blog and survey infographic.
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“The findings of our DAM research lay bare the reality we’re seeing every day. Customers continue to rely on us to manage and automate the visual content lifecycle on an epic scale. Legacy DAMs were simply not built with today’s visual-first experiences in mind.”
Current State of DAM Usage
In today’s visual economy, brands increasingly rely on images and videos. According to the survey, visual content is used for five main reasons:
- Build brand trust (64%)
- Improve product credibility (62%)
- Enhance market awareness/SEO (59%)
- Drive product purchases (52%)
- Reduce product returns (31%)
Given this reliance, it’s no surprise that the number of digital assets online is surging, with 25% of respondents storing 50,000 digital assets or more.
While text assets such as documents, PDFs, and presentations remain the most common type stored in DAMs today (85%), images (79%) and videos (66%) are close behind. Brands expect to use even more visual assets in the near future, with anticipated increases in:
- Live-streaming and long-form video (34%)
- Images (65%)
- Short-form video (64%)
- 3D assets (41%)
- Major bottlenecks flagged in workflow/collaboration and post-production work
Major Bottlenecks in Workflow and Post-Production
As digital assets become more diverse and numerous, delivering visual experiences at scale is increasingly challenging. The survey identifies bottlenecks in two key areas: workflow/collaboration and post-production. The top challenges include:
- Management resources (51% identified as the biggest challenge)
- Post-production efforts to create asset variations (48%)
When delivering assets to development teams for use on websites or apps, challenges include:
- Managing requests and feedback (44%)
- Timely asset delivery and delayed feedback (39%)
Additionally, when receiving assets from creative partners, issues related to:
- Asset quality (50%)
- Support for multiple formats (50%)
- Late asset delivery rank high.
Due to these challenges, nearly 29% of respondents reported it takes days to get approved assets live on websites or applications, leading to potential losses in today’s fast-paced economy. Consequently, workflow and collaboration, along with asset optimization (59%), are ranked as the most crucial capabilities a DAM should provide today.
Outlook: Automation and Generative AI Solutions
Looking ahead, respondents see significant potential for automation and generative AI capabilities to improve workflows. The top five repetitive tasks a DAM should automate include:
- Personalized asset composition (53%)
- Asset variations for channels and devices (49%)
- Brand guideline moderation (43%)
- User-generated content (UGC) moderation (32%)
- UGC normalization (25%)
Furthermore, the top five tools or features where generative AI could make a difference include:
- Asset editing (54%)
- Text creation (53%)
- Automated image and video management (52%)
- Automatic content modification/personalization (47%)
- Asset insights and recommendations (42%)
Wanda Cadigan, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Cloudinary, stated, “The findings of our DAM research lay bare the reality we’re seeing every day. Customers continue to rely on us to manage and automate the visual content lifecycle on an epic scale. Legacy DAMs were simply not built with today’s visual-first experiences in mind.”
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Source – businesswire
