What is digital asset management?
Digital asset management (DAM) is the process of storing, organizing, and sharing digital assets. A few examples of digital assets are images, videos, logos, PDFs, and presentations.
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What is DAM software?
DAM software is a system that allows businesses to manage their entire digital asset collection in a single source of truth. It is similar to a Google Drive for your files, but it has automated features that are specific to media assets.
DAM systems come in two main types
1. Open-source DAM
Open-source DAM is DAM software that gives you full access to the original source code. This gives you the chance to add new features and update existing ones in the DAM system.
But, keep in mind, in order to make changes to the source code, you’re going to need programmers to help you.
2. SaaS DAM
SaaS DAM is DAM software that is developed and maintained by a third-party provider. You won’t be able to access and modify the codes.
With this type of software, you’ll need to pay for the license through a subscription payment. No need for a development team here since your DAM provider takes care of that.
What types of assets do DAM software store?
There are a number of assets you can store in a DAM system. Some of them include:
Videos
Animations
Audio content
Images, graphics
and media files
Documents
and presentations
Licensing files
and certificates
Videos
Animations
Audio content
What types of assets do DAM systems store?
Licensing files and certificates
What types of file formats are stored in a DAM?
There are many different file formats that can be stored in a DAM solution, but the most common formats are:
Image formats
- JPEG
- PNG
- WEBP
- GIF
- TIFF
- Camera RAW
- Photoshop (PSD)
- Photoshop Big (PSB)
Document formats
- Adobe Illustrator AI
- EPS
- DOC
- MS Word
- PowerPoint
- SVG
- Adobe InDesign CC
Video and audio formats
- MP4
- MOV
- AVI
- 3GP
- MPEG
- MP3
- WAV
What features does a DAM system have?
Search and filtering
File formatting
User permissions
Asset distribution
Variation management
Security
Version control
Collaboration and workflow
How DAM works in 4 simple steps
1. Centralize
A DAM system lets you centralize all of your digital assets in one single location so that you don’t have to work across multiple folders stored in different places. This means your team can work together in one place without worrying about out-of-date assets.
2. Manage
With a DAM, you can easily organize digital content through folders, tagging, and naming conventions. If you’re working with a large collection of assets, you can easily search and filter your assets to quickly find what you need. That way, you’ll know exactly what digital assets you have without the mess of searching through scattered files.
3. Optimize
Whether your digital assets need to go on a website, in a PDF, or on a sales channel, you’ll need to optimize the asset for wherever it’s going. With a DAM system, you can resize, transform, and format your digital assets, so that they’re optimized and ready for their final destination.
4. Distribute
DAM makes sharing digital media easy no matter where it needs to go—whether it's to agencies, publishers, sales channels, or retail partners. Depending on the DAM system, you can share your media through links, feeds, exports, or even integrations.
What are the benefits of a DAM system?
Digital asset management systems are designed to make handling digital media easier. Here are some of the benefits you’ll get from using a DAM system:
Better team collaboration
Your team can collaborate even better when working with a DAM solution. You can all work from the same place in real-time, avoiding unnecessary issues like asset redundancy (or duplicates) in your media collection or sharing out-of-date media.
Improved security
DAM systems make sure you have a secure place to store your digital assets where only users with the right permissions have access to your media. Storing your assets in a safe place like a DAM also prevents any data loss—no need to worry about accidentally deleting or losing important media.
Increased efficiency
Your team can create, review, and format all your digital media directly in the DAM system, meaning they won’t need to hop around between complex file systems trying to complete all their different tasks. Plus, your designers will have an overview of your assets so they can quickly update and repurpose old media.
Better user experience
Whether your digital media is for your website, marketplaces, or clients, you want to make sure your assets are high quality, consistent, and formatted perfectly for wherever they are going. DAM makes that possible, so you can give customers an experience that makes them excited to buy.
Brand consistency
Using a DAM system can help, not only build a brand identity but also keep it consistent. With a full overview of all your brand assets, you can easily identify what media breaks branding guidelines or just needs some updating. Plus, you can store your branding guidelines directly in your DAM so everyone who needs it has access.
Better team collaboration
Your team can collaborate even better when working with a DAM solution. You can all work from the same place in real-time, avoiding unnecessary issues like asset redundancy (or duplicates) in your media collection or sharing out-of-date media.
Improved security
DAM systems make sure you have a secure place to store your digital assets where only users with the right permissions have access to your media.
Storing your assets in a safe place like a DAM also prevents any data loss—no need to worry about accidentally deleting or losing important media.
Increased efficiency
Your team can create, review, and format all your digital media directly in the DAM system, meaning they won’t need to hop around between complex file systems trying to complete all their different tasks.
Plus, your designers will have an overview of your assets so they can quickly update and repurpose old media.
Better user experience
Whether your digital media is for your website, marketplaces, or clients, you want to make sure your assets are high quality, consistent, and formatted perfectly for wherever they are going.
DAM makes that possible, so you can give customers an experience that makes them excited to buy.
Brand consistency
Using a DAM system can help, not only build a brand identity but also keep it consistent. With a full overview of all your brand assets, you can easily identify what media breaks branding guidelines or just needs some updating.
Plus, you can store your branding guidelines directly in your DAM so everyone who needs it has access.
What industries typically use DAM?
Ecommerce and Retail
Brands and Manufacturers
Real Estate
Media Production
Architecture and Construction
Publishers
What industries typically use DAM?
Ecommerce and Retail
Brands and Manufacturers
Real Estate
Media Production
Architecture and Construction
Publishers
Who usually works with DAM?
Each industry has its own set of teams that work together on digital assets. Of course, some teams will work on digital assets more than others, but to give you an idea of what this could look like, here’s a few ways we’ve seen different teams work with DAM.
Marketing teams
Marketers can use DAM to easily pull assets for marketing and advertising creatives. They can also use it to manage important branding assets, making sure the brand identity is maintained and consistent.
Sales teams
DAM will come in handy for your Sales team as they’ll be able to access up-to-date sales and marketing materials to make selling even easier. No need to worry about old materials getting sent out or having to wait on Marketing to send them over.
Creative teams
Whether your Creative team has photographers, videographers, graphic designers, or a mix of all three, they’ll be grateful for a centralized database like DAM to keep all of their projects in order. Uploading and accessing media for different projects is a breeze, saving them loads of time.
Legal teams
Your Legal team can use DAM not only for consistent branding on their documents and contracts but also for checking the legal compliance of all of your assets. From usage rights and company guidelines, your Legal team can check it all in one place.
When should you consider getting a DAM system?
Here is a list of things that generally are a good indicator that you need a DAM.
When your digital assets are spread across multiple files and systems, and it’s becoming difficult to manage
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