Against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems have become indispensable for enterprise companies that aim to deliver consistent, personalized, and engaging content experiences at scale.
Today's DAM systems need to be adaptable and fully integrated within any company’s wider digital ecosystem in order to produce targeted, rich-media content that resonates with consumers at every touchpoint.
Bynder's SVP of Product Strategy Mark Tenniglo, and Forrester's Principal Analyst Chuck Gahun recently hosted a webinar to discuss the key trends influencing DAM in 2024. Here are the highlights from the conversation:
Trend 1: DAM solutions must integrate well with CMS, PIM, and creative toolkits
Chuck: In our conversations with creative and marketing leaders, we found that they wanted to ensure that their DAM was well connected to a larger ecosystem, and more importantly, continues to be the single source of truth for rich media assets. The top three integrations they prioritize are creative toolkits, web CMS, and project management software.
Integrating with a Product Information Management (PIM) system is also becoming increasingly important. Lifestyle videos and images are essential for e-commerce products and a DAM system is central to driving those content experiences.
Mark: This matches what we see at Bynder. Our top three integrations are creative toolkits, CMS, and PIM. We also see a lot of our customers integrating the DAM with their marketing automation platforms.
Customer story: Discover how Mazda integrated the Bynder DAM with its CMS to fuel on-brand, digital experiences. Mazda now benefits from fewer content-related costs, faster time-to-market, and better brand compliance worldwide.
Trend 2: AI in DAM will be harnessed to automate the manual tasks involved in creating and managing content
Chuck: Last year, we did some research on AI capabilities in DAM platforms and we're starting to see generative AI taking over some manual, rudimentary tasks, such as copy generated on image templates for dynamic personalized assets. We're also seeing more co-pilot editing happening in these systems where technology is starting to hold your hand.
The last one which many marketers want to use to really gain that competitive advantage is image generation or video generation - such as being able to stitch videos together to create a new asset for marketing. Many of the industry leaders we spoke to had already experimented with generative AI, but mentioned that it's still not very good at creating branded assets that meet a certain threshold of accuracy.
Of course, AI-powered metadata extraction for findability is a major capability for DAM, being able to augment and create the metadata correctly when images or videos are uploaded.
Mark: The big question about generative AI that we hear from our enterprise customers is around trust. How do I know if the content that gets generated is valid? Does the generated image have rights management issues? At Bynder, we're seeing greater adoption of generative AI for text as opposed to imagery.
While everyone is focusing on generative AI for content creation, we're seeing a lot of value being provided with metadata extraction which not only improves findability, but also increases the ROI of existing content that can be easily discovered thanks to automated metadata tagging.Mark Tenniglo
SVP Product Strategy at Bynder
Customer story: Find out how Siemens Healthineers saves €3.5M+ with Bynder’s AI-powered DAM solution.
Trend 3: DAM needs automation and workflows to power its capabilities
Any single source of truth repository needs automation and workflows to power its capabilities and features. Technology decision-makers are looking for DAMs with collaborative capabilities to help their marketing, brand, and even creative teams be more efficient. They're asking questions like: how can a DAM help me create marketing templates that are compliant or meet regulatory requirements?
Technology decision-makers are looking for DAMs with collaborative capabilities to help their marketing, brand, and even creative teams be more efficient.Chuck Gahun
Principal Analyst at Forrester
We're also seeing a growing interest in persona-based user interfaces. This capability focuses on making it easy for a creative or a marketer to access the functions of the DAM that matter the most to them. For example, a Marketing Director might only see approved, final creative concepts for review, while the creative team has a more granular interface for detailed feedback.
Mark: For companies with a large DAM user base, that personalized approach is needed. If you have a team of 1000 users which includes two or three different audiences, then a one-size-fits-all setup could work with some basic access controls. But when you have 80,0000 employees using the DAM, persona-based access controls are essential for managing diverse user needs and functionalities within a single platform.
When it comes to workflows and automation, it's about enabling marketers to create content that's consistent, as well as optimizing and delivering that content to provide the best experience possible.
Customer story: See how Golfbreaks produces content 90% quicker and reduces the creative burden on their design teams with Bynder’s Dynamic Asset Transformation (DAT) module.
Trend 4: DAM is a foundational technology that can drive innovation and creativity across digital channels
Chuck: The impact of DAM can not be overstated. Not only is it helping brands decrease time to market and reduce asset production and agency costs, it's also driving new customer acquisition through on-brand digital experiences.
Consumer perception of brand value, quality, and power is undergoing a significant shift. Our research reveals a growing emphasis on design in how brands go to market and communicate. Consider your own consumer experiences in the past few years. You'll likely notice a rise in design maturity.
This trend reflects a growing recognition by enterprises that design and creativity are core competencies for building strong brands. And this competency is now starting to have a direct impact on improving performance, revenues, and valuations.Chuck Gahun
Principal Analyst at Forrester
Mark: Budget constraints and the current economic climate make achieving efficiency crucial. But this shouldn't come at the expense of good design. That's where Bynder can help, by applying automation and smart rules to create personalized, beautifully designed content that engages customers at every stage of the journey.
Customer story: Discover how Red Roof uses Bynder to centralize all marketing assets and deliver a high-volume of branded content to drive stand-out digital experiences.
Bynder has been recognized as a Leader in the Digital Asset Management Forrester Wave Report Q1, 2024. Read the full report to discover why Bynder's DAM is a mission-critical tool for enterprise organizations aiming to remain agile and competitive in today’s digital-first economy.
