Feature Article: Streamlining the Digital Asset Supply Chain: The Power of API-first DAM and AI Automation
Matt Noyes, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Cloudinary, has kindly contributed an article as part of this month’s editorial theme: DAM and the Digital Asset Supply Chain. Matt covers a range of topics, including the challenges of managing an ever-increasing volume of digital assets across an ever-broadening number of distribution channels. Another key issue highlighted is the difficulty in striking the right operational balance between speed and quality, as Matt explains:
“One of the most notable challenges in the digital asset supply chain is that there is a never-ending tug-of-war between prioritizing time-to-market with the quality of the user experience. The faster you go, the more the quality tends to suffer. This is partially due to omnichannel delivery requiring each visual asset to be customized for each platform, device, and screen it’s delivered on. Preparing content for this type of distribution is traditionally a manual process, which involves resizing, cropping, or reformatting images and videos for each specific use case. Tack on all the requisite back and forth between creatives, web teams and others, and this manual editing process not only consumes valuable time but can also lead to errors and inconsistencies that compromise brand integrity.” [Read More]
Matt goes on to explain how fragmented and inefficient workflows are likely to further exacerbate this issue, citing disparate, disconnected systems and silo-based operations as a root cause of poor discoverability, slow approval processes, delayed campaigns, and ultimately, a decreased return on investment. The answer to this is to adopt a composable approach to DAM by way of a modular and agile API-First architecture.
“That’s why we’ve seen a surge in the adoption of architecture among large organizations. Rather than being locked into a rigid system, composable architecture based on an API-first concept allows for modular integration of various services as the need arises. This flexibility ensures that brands can scale their workflows as needed without having to overhaul their entire infrastructure.” [Read More]
The article continues by exploring how AI is reaching a stage where it can take care of traditionally labour-intensive post-production tasks such as upload, tagging, categorisation and editing. Matt also discusses how a new breed of Generative AI tools are capable of modifying digital assets and creating custom versions for a range of different platforms, campaigns and destination channels such as e-commerce, advertising and social media.
“One of the most valuable applications of AI in post-production is its ability to transform assets for specific use cases. For example, generative AI tools can remove or change the background of an image, adjust colors, or even alter product variations without the need for additional photoshoots or manual Photoshop work. This allows brands to quickly adapt and scale their visual content for e-commerce, advertising, or social media campaigns, ultimately saving time and resources while maintaining quality.” [Read More]
You can read the full article at the link below.
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