9 Digital Asset Management Trends To Watch In 2024
ROI Is More Important Than Ever: Digital asset management tools are increasingly focusing on driving higher ROI through enhanced features to provide additional value and justify the pricing.
Generative AI Isn't Going Anywhere: DAM tools are incorporating generative AI features that will help users create, organize, and manage their digital assets.
Enabling Collaboration: Digital assets aren't created in a vacuum; DAM users need to be able to share and work together on and using the assets in the system.
When it comes to digital asset management, you may wonder if you’re doing it right. I looked at the top trends and some best practices to see where people focus when it comes to managing digital assets and what is working in real life.
1. Increased Emphasis On ROI
While emphasis on ROI is a constant theme this year in the digital world, the digital asset management market space is especially focused on this.
DAM tool Pimcore says, “Revenue generation, productivity savings, and brand value generations are areas where organizations majorly focus.”
Their website then explains how a strong driver for adopting a digital asset management (DAM) solution is its growing contribution to higher ROI. Because of this, solution providers are focusing on (or adding) features and functionality that drive additional value for the price of the digital asset management system.
These DAM features might include file management systems, metadata management capabilities, the ability to work with most file types, and functionality to convert images and videos.
Another way that DAM systems can help with ROI is that they offer workflows for managing and sharing digital assets without needing to integrate with additional tools (that have to be paid for separately).
Native automations can streamline workflows as part of your broader digital transformation efforts and save users a lot of money, boosting the ROI you get on your DAM solution.
A greater return on investment means more dollars to invest in expanding your organization's market share.
2. Need To Create Holistic Customer Experiences
This trend is relevant to orgs that create and use media assets for marketing or sales purposes. Creating personalized and well-rounded customer experiences can mean the difference between bringing on a new customer and losing out to your competition.
To address this need and support market growth, many digital asset management systems have functionality to support personalization and help you make use of the right asset with the right message at each stage in the lifecycle of a buyer journey.
In their DAM market report ‘Digital Asset Management Done Right,’ Adobe (a key player in the industry) explains that this can be done by removing content bottlenecks, automating and streamlining review processes, and making content easy to find, use, and repurpose (even at a self-service level).
In my experience, personalization is not really an option—it’s a necessity. We’re constantly going back to the question, ‘How does this serve the customer?’
As project managers, this is something we should be striving to ask consistently as part of our overall project management methodology. How is the work we are doing serving our customers or users, and how can we make supporting our customers or users easier and more efficient for our team?
Having the right technology and scalability options to drive these holistic experiences gives our team more time to focus on delighting customers, users, and even other stakeholders instead of hunting for or creating personalized brand assets.
3. Increased Use Of Generative AI
Generative AI is being infused into almost every SaaS tool on the market (I’m looking at you PM tools, proposal software, scheduling, and resource management tools) for operational efficiency, and it is no surprise that artificial intelligence shows up on this list when it comes to digital asset management or even more broadly, content management tools.
AI can produce multimedia digital content at a much faster pace than using a manual process each and every time.
In a digital marketing context, where many variations of a specific creative piece are needed, generative AI can help make these different variations more efficient—allowing organizations and agencies to use their design talent for other project work.
In addition to helping produce a higher volume of content, AI (and machine learning) can help keep content organized. These kinds of tools can help with creating and maintaining a metadata tagging system, sorting content for market segmentation, or suggesting use cases for assets that have already been created.
4. Need For Cloud-Based Systems
There are many reasons organizations are seeking cloud-based DAM systems. A cloud-based system allows users to log in and work from anywhere. Now that working from home, hybrid work environments, and traveling are all part of our work routines, this flexibility keeps people productive no matter where they are.
Another benefit of cloud-based DAM solutions is that they require less support from an IT professional to set up, use, and maintain. Physical software doesn’t need to be installed or downloaded onto your machine, freeing up time and storage space for other uses.
Administrators can set permissions that allow the right level of access to the DAM system for each user. This is especially important in large enterprises where hundreds or thousands of people might be using the same DAM tool.
5. Need For Integrations With Collaboration Tools
When working on digital projects, there’s a strong need for collaboration tools. When considering your tech stack (or work ecosystem if you prefer that term), it is important to consider how your tools will work together to drive efficiency.
In a world focused on productivity, having a DAM tool that doesn’t stand alone but works well with other collaboration tools (such as Slack, design tools, content distribution tools, and many more) is table stakes.
6. Increased Scale Of Content
Now that AI content has become so pervasive, organizations are producing more content more quickly. This means that DAM platforms need to be able to keep up with a larger number of assets and provide the necessary version control to keep things organized.
Brand consistency and brand standards don’t become less important as content volume increases. In fact, I would argue that these standards are even more important as brands work to stand out in the crowd.
Need to quantify this increase? Market.us reports that the Generative AI in content creation market was valued at USD 11.6 Billion in 2023. It is expected to reach USD 163.8 Billion by 2033, with a CAGR of 31.20% during the forecast period (2024 to 2033).
7. Need For Headless DAM
If you’re not familiar with headless DAM systems, you probably should be. These are a category of DAM software where the tools lack a front end. Why is this helpful?
According to Pimcore, a leader in the DAM space, “Headless abilities can vastly facilitate multi-experiential information and digital asset delivery by including channels like mobile apps, smart devices, digital and voice assistants, progressive web apps (PWAs), and single-page applications (SPAs), among others.”
They go on to say, “For enterprises that are serious about providing impeccable omnichannel commerce experiences, automatic dissemination of consistent digital assets has become the number one priority.”
So if your organization is growing in ecommerce or a similar area and is looking to provide an exceptional omnichannel experience, you may want to consider a headless DAM to help you reach your goals.
While trends can happen for a lot of reasons, this one is more about creating initiatives around customer experience and exceeding sales goals and revenue targets.
8. Increased Need For Data Security and Compliance
Orgs are keeping a closer eye on increased data security and compliance, and the management of digital assets is no different. When choosing a DAM system, data security and compliance need to be at the forefront of your search criteria.
So, perhaps trend isn’t quite the right word here; it’s more like the bare minimum that a DAM tool needs to provide.
In an interview with Adobe, Andrew Isaacs, Vice President and the Head of Marketing Operations at Novartis shared, “Regulations, requirements, and compliance in a highly regulated industry make asset management very complex.”
The pharmaceutical industry is very highly regulated. And there are requirements when you’re talking about your brands in areas of codependency and fair balance. So if you have a drug that, let’s say, lowers your cholesterol, you have to identify clinical trials, patient population, and so on.
And in addition to that, there are all these other types of regulations for things like font size and imagery…you have to be able to track back all of the information—to how you went through a review and approval process with medical, legal, and regulatory bodies, and everything has to be able to be tracked back for audit purposes.
While not all digital projects take place in such highly regulated spaces as the pharmaceutical industry or healthcare, it is good to be aware of legal and regulatory requirements around data privacy and data security.
You can’t turn on the news or scroll through social media without reading about hackers, data leaks, and the like, so as a digital project manager, it is good to be extra vigilant about security and data privacy.
Another consideration around making data privacy and security a priority when choosing a DAM system is changes in the legal requirements. Even if you’re based in North America you need to have an understanding of European (and more global) data privacy requirements like GDPR.
Read more about who uses digital asset management software and other industries that can make use of the software.
9. Need For Mobile Solutions
As businesses move from being centered around working in the office to being able to work from anywhere, having mobile solutions for business software becomes more and more critical to getting work done and improving productivity.
MediaValet has designed its DAM solution with this in mind, giving users the ability to store, organize, and retrieve media files or other digital content from anywhere on any device.
In a competitive landscape, with all things being equal, DAM users may choose to leverage a solution that can be accessed via any device over one that requires a desktop computer. SaaS companies are beginning to understand this and develop more mobile-friendly software.
But mobile friendliness doesn’t start and end with the software. When choosing digital asset management software, users need to ensure that the tool they’re investing in creates mobile-friendly assets.
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