Survey reveals challenges in digital asset management growth

An independent survey commissioned by Cloudinary found that most brands currently use multiple digital asset management (DAM) systems but face integration, workflow, collaboration, and post-production issues, particularly visual content.

The survey highlights that the reliance on images and videos is growing in an increasingly visual economy. Data reveals that brands use visual content primarily to build brand trust (64%), improve product credibility (62%), and enhance market awareness (59%). Thus, digital assets are proliferating, with 25% of surveyed brands now storing over 50,000 digital assets.

Text-based assets like documents, PDFs, and presentations continue to dominate DAMs, constituting 85% of stored assets, while images and video assets follow closely at 79% and 66%, respectively. With expectations of increased use of visual formats, including images (65%), short-form videos (64%), and 3D content (41%), the challenge of managing such assets at scale is becoming increasingly significant.

The survey identifies significant bottlenecks in workflow and collaboration processes and issues related to post-production work. Brands report challenges in deploying large volumes of visual content related to the availability of management resources (51%) and the time and effort required for asset variations (48%).

Moreover, when delivering assets to development teams, respondents cited managing requests and feedback as the leading challenge (44%), followed by timely deployment of live assets and receiving late feedback (39%). Repeated issues from creative partners include asset quality and support for multiple formats (50%) and delays in asset delivery.

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."

As these challenges persist, automation and generative AI are seen as potential solutions to streamline processes. Survey participants identified the top five tasks for automation in modern DAM systems as personalised asset composition (53%), asset variations for channels and devices (49%), and brand guideline moderation (43%).

Generative AI is expected to further aid in asset management through features such as asset editing (54%), automated image and video management (52%), and automatic content modification/personalisation (47%). These potential enhancements align with the increasing demand for agility and efficiency in visual content management.

The Cloudinary Global DAM Survey conducted by Researchscape International involved 420 DAM users from marketing, IT, and executive leadership positions across 14 countries. The survey shed light on the current state of DAM usage and the growing necessity for technological adaptation in the management of digital assets.