As the digital asset management industry has matured, the terms “digital assets” and “content” have begun to be used interchangeably. While this change emerged as a way to resonate more with marketing teams and the increasing surge in content marketing, the use of the word “content” within the DAM space has created the illusion that a DAM and a CMS perform the same function. What does CMS stand for? A CMS is a Content Management System like WordPress or Contentful.

A DAM and a CMS act as two completely separate systems, performing very different functions for a marketing team. In a nutshell, a CMS helps manage content for your website, while a DAM helps manage content for your entire organization across multiple channels.

In other words:

• A CMS powers your website.
• A DAM powers your entire organization’s content ecosystem.

In this article, we’ll break down the definitions, features, and best use cases of each system—and answer the common question: If I already have a CMS, why do I need a DAM?

What is The Difference Between DAM and CMS?

• The definition of a DAM and a CMS,
• The key features of each solution, and
• What use cases each solution is best for.

To understand the difference between DAM and CMS, a good starting point is to look at the definition of each:

What is a Content Management System?

WPBeginner describes a CMS as: “A platform that facilitates the creation, editing, organization, and publishing of content.”

Primarily, a CMS is designed for website and related web content management. It allows users to craft and manage textual and media content on websites. Typically, access to a CMS is reserved for specialized members of the marketing team, such as web developers and content marketers. Its media library generally hosts assets explicitly intended for webpage creation.

What is a Digital Asset Management System?

On the other hand, TechTarget defines DAM as: “A tool for organizing, storing, and retrieving rich media, and managing digital rights and permissions.”

DAM serves as a hub for organizing and disseminating media, visuals, and content throughout an entire organization. While primarily managed by the marketing team, DAM can be accessed by various departments like sales, product management, PR, communications, and even external entities like contractors, agencies, and partners.

Let’s explore each in further detail:

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

A digital asset management system is pivotal to the media and content creation landscape. It is a centralized hub, enabling companies to seamlessly organize, collaborate, and distribute their visual content and digital files. By establishing a unified repository for all essential visuals, a DAM streamlines operations, mitigates bottlenecks, and fortifies brand consistency across diverse channels.

Within the DAM environment, users are equipped to manage an extensive range of digital files. They can effortlessly resize, reformat, monitor usage histories, and share hefty files with external collaborators. Moreover, DAM ensures robust media security through features like user permissions, compliance adherence, data recovery, and geo-replication.

However, it’s vital to recognize the limits of DAM in publishing. While DAM excels in handling visuals and offers select features like web publishing and embedding, it can’t create well-designed, highly specific web pages like a CMS can.

Interested in seeing a DAM in action? Check out our free guided tour right here!

Key Features of a DAM

• Storing and managing brand and marketing material (photos, videos, etc.)
• Finding and retrieving media assets, using advanced searches
• Enriching assets with custom metadata, such as keywords
• Version control, history tracking, and reporting for all media assets
• Manipulating assets into other forms, such as file type or size
• Access permissions for internal and external users
• Templating and Proofing capabilities for seamless collaboration on digital assets

The Bottom Line

A DAM is best for companies that need a better way to produce, store, collaborate on, share and distribute large amounts of marketing content (photos, videos, audio, etc.)

Content Management Systems (CMS)

A content management system essentially acts as the foundation for your website (blog, news, eCommerce, etc). With a CMS, you’re able to publish, change and remove content from your website, making it a strong solution for teams across the globe.

A CMS is usually home to web designers, editors, and administrators. It hosts easy-to-use templates and comprehensive WYSIWYG building blocks to allow users to easily and quickly build beautiful, impactful websites. It has strong capabilities when managing text-based content, with version tracking, SEO add-ons, and robust search capabilities.

Where a CMS is lacking, however, is in its media abilities. The media library within a CMS is built to function as a repository for content being shared on your website. While it can store videos, images, documents, audio, and more, its searching, sharing and permission capabilities are limited. With this in mind, media and content that are not part of your website should not be stored in your CMS.

Examples of Content Management Systems

Key Features of a CMS

• Content authoring tools (blogs, product pages, eCommerce copy)
• Publishing workflows with scheduling and revision control
• Templates & WYSIWYG builders for creating page layouts
• SEO add-ons to optimize web content

The Bottom Line

A CMS is best for companies looking to streamline the way they build visual, informative, and user-friendly websites.

CMS vs DAM: Feature Comparison

Integrating DAM and CMS

When you understand the difference between a DAM and CMS, it becomes clear that the two systems are actually complementary to each other (rather than alternatives). With a DAM, users are able to use advanced library capabilities to feed their web team the media content they need to confidently build on-brand, visual web content. This benefit only improves with an integration between the two, as users will be able to access the DAM without having to leave the CMS.

Benefits of a DAM and CMS Integration

When you’re able to access your DAM within your CMS, it allows your users to:

• Easily access on-brand and approved media assets from within your CMS
• Automatically upload and create links within your CMS library
• Use advanced search capabilities to find the assets they need
• Improve brand consistency across all web properties
• Effectively re-use media content across your website

Example of a DAM and CMS Integration

Without a DAM
You’re the web developer for a furniture retailer and you’re working on a web page to promote one of your partner brands and their upcoming sale. You go into your CMS library to find their logo, but there are 3 different variations. You know you should send a message to the marketing team to clarify which one to use, but this page needs to go live today. You ultimately decide to use the most recently uploaded logo and pray that it’s the right one.

With a DAM
You’re the same web developer, working on the same web page, but instead of searching for the logo within your CMS library, you open your DAM library plugin. From there, you can instantly see a category that your marketing team created specifically for this campaign. Within this category, you find a logo that was hand-picked by the marketing team and confidently add to the page to be published.

Learn more about DAM and CMS Integrations

MediaValet has countless integrations available out-of-the-box and an open API to enable your team to customize any of your tech stack needs.

Some of MediaValet’s CMS integrations include:

Contentful: MediaValet’s Contentful integration speeds up your content creation process by enabling users to find and embed MediaValet assets directly into Contentful entries, saving time and effort.

This DAM CMS integration enables teams to focus on creating compelling content without worrying about asset sourcing and management.

WordPress: MediaValet’s WordPress integration enhances your website creation process by enabling teams to easily search and insert on-brand assets from your MediaValet library directly within the WordPress platform.

The DAM CMS integration ensures that only approved and current assets are published. This guarantees that your website always showcases the most up-to-date and on-brand corporate visuals, protecting it from outdated or unauthorized content.

Drupal: The Drupal integration allows teams to easily insert images and videos from MediaValet into Drupal’s content editor, simplifying the process of adding assets to your webpages.

Whether you need images for website banners, social media posts, or print materials, this DAM CMS integration has you covered.

Content Management System vs Digital Asset Management FAQs

DAM and CMS: Better Together

With integrations into leading CMS platforms, DAM is equipped to bring your web development to the next level. See how MediaValet can be integrated into your Drupal 8 or WordPress platform.

It’s no secret that creative departments need effective digital asset management workflows in place in order to do their best. That goes for all departments within any organization. But with the high—and ever-increasing—demand for both fast and quality work by creative departments today, setting up creatives for success just makes sense.

The most effective workflows take into account the different kinds of situational needs for an organization. And while every organization has varied, vast and complex use cases, they tend to fit into two broad categories: asset-based, and campaign-based workflows. In this post, we explore the differences between the two types of workflows, and how the right integrations have helped MediaValet clients establish their most effective workflows.

In this post we will cover

What is a Digital Asset Management Workflow?

A digital asset management workflow is a streamlined process for managing, organizing, and distributing digital assets like images, videos, and documents within an organization. It starts with the creation or acquisition of assets, followed by their upload into digital asset management software, where they are tagged with metadata for easy search and retrieval.

After assets are organized within the system, they undergo an approval process to ensure they meet brand standards. Once approved, they are distributed across various channels, facilitated by the DAM’s integration capabilities. As assets become outdated, they are archived or deleted to keep the system current. This workflow ensures that digital assets are securely stored, easily accessible, and consistently used across all brand touchpoints.

A Typical Asset Workflow

Let’s look at a typical workflow and asset lifecycle.

Whether as part of a larger campaign, or a one-off event, the beginning of a digital asset’s life always starts with an asset request in one form or another. This request initiates the entire process, from ideation to distribution.

Once an asset is finalized and has all the necessary approvals, it’s ready for distribution – which can take many forms depending on the specific asset or campaign. At the end of the asset’s life, it’s usually archived, however, for some lucky assets, they get another run or two through the cycle, as they’re repurposed for other campaigns or use-cases.

For smaller teams or projects, this entire cycle may be handled by a small handful of people. But, for larger teams or projects, dozens may be involved and requires a robust system to manage the complex steps, requirements and approvals. In these circumstances, it’s more effective to separate this complex workflow management from your DAM.

Workflows aren’t standard, they’re unique to each organization, team and project, and we find they’re constantly changing and multiplying. Whatever your workflows are today, most likely they won’t be the same, or of the same number, tomorrow. This separation of workflow and DAM often provides a higher level of operational flexibility and scalability.

Types of DAM Workflows

Although there is a wide variety of workflow solutions available today, we break it into two levels:

1. Asset-Based Workflows
2. Campaign-Based Workflows

The workflow system that will best meet your specific needs will depend on the number of unique workflows that you require across your department or organization and their complexity.

Digital Asset Management Workflow #1: Asset-Based

Asset-based workflows automate and optimize the processes around managing the digital assets themselves. These processes or steps include things like approving assets once they’ve been uploaded by external parties, adding attributes or metadata, categorizing assets, generating specific renditions, expiring assets, updating and distributing assets – the list goes on and on. These types of workflows focus on preparing the assets to be used as source files or as content.

Asset-based workflows are generally quite simple and tend to be linear in nature, requiring simple triggers and actions to automate. In-DAM workflow features are ideal and cost-effective for addressing these types of asset workflows.

For example, here’s a visualization of an asset-based workflow for a single photographer uploading assets to a company’s DAM. In-app workflows that are available in many DAM systems can help automate components of this process, ensuring the right assets are uploaded the right way (to make them easily discoverable).

Automated events, in this example, include:

1. Notifying a named administrator that photos have been uploaded and are ready to be approved.
2. Letting the photographer know if any photos were rejected.
3. Mandating what attributes need to be added.
4. Enabling auto-categorization and tagging.
5. Making approved images readily available, in the right formats and sizes, to the appropriate teams or systems.

This simple workflow helps reduce the number of basic tasks that the photographer and administrator would normally have done manually. It also eliminates the chance of human error that could cause bottlenecks, miscategorization, or overall lack of discoverability.

Digital Asset Management Workflow #2: Campaign-Based

Campaign-based workflows, on the other hand, are more complex by nature as they tend to manage the creation of assets, versus asset usage. This involves more people and more complexity.

Campaign-based workflows manage the asset lifecycle of new campaign-related assets from ideation to distribution. This involves coordinating the efforts of multiple teams and departments, and involving multiple levels of review and approval, along with distribution points. The more complex workflows include everything from a local one-off marketing campaign to a global re-branding and everything in between.

When it comes to anything but the simplest asset-based workflows, we recommend using a campaign-based workflow, connecting your DAM with a third-party project management vendor, like Workfront or Wrike. These organizations specialize in workflow and dedicate all their resources and energy to addressing a much wider array of use-cases, from basic to the most complex.

Over the years, we’ve found that integrating MediaValet with Wrike, a project management solution, that it delivers the most value to our customers, both in the short and long term. To this end, to enable and support the unique complex workflows of all our clients, we focus on creating deep integrations with well-known and regarded third-party workflow products. After all, it’s about setting our clients up for success, with the most efficient and effective partners we can find.

Digital Asset Management Workflow Challenges

Managing digital assets through a streamlined workflow offers significant advantages, but it also comes with a set of challenges that organizations must navigate

Integration Complexity:

Integrating various tools and platforms with the DAM system can be challenging, especially when dealing with outdated software or proprietary formats.

Inconsistent Metadata Tagging:

Inconsistent or incomplete metadata can make it difficult to find and retrieve assets, leading to inefficiencies and user frustration.

Approval Process Bottlenecks:

The approval process can become a bottleneck if too many stakeholders are involved or if there’s a lack of clarity about who has final decision-making authority.

System Overload:

As organizations grow and accumulate more digital assets, the DAM system can become overwhelmed. Without proper archiving and deletion protocols, the system may become cluttered, making it harder to locate current, relevant assets.

Addressing these challenges requires ongoing attention to system integration, clear governance practices, and regular maintenance of the DAM environment.

How DAM Software Resolves Workflow Challenges

Digital Asset Management software (DAM) is specifically designed to tackle the challenges that organizations face in managing their digital assets efficiently. By addressing common workflow issues, DAM systems provide robust solutions that enhance productivity and streamline operations.

Simplifying Integration:
Modern DAM software is built with powerful integration capabilities, allowing it to seamlessly connect with other tools and platforms within your tech stack. Whether you’re using content management systems, project management tools, or marketing automation platforms, DAM software ensures smooth communication and data exchange across all systems. This reduces the friction caused by incompatible formats or outdated software, making the entire workflow more cohesive and efficient.

Ensuring Consistent Metadata Tagging:
DAM software centralizes and standardizes the process of metadata tagging. With built-in guidelines and automated tagging features, it ensures that every asset is accurately categorized and easy to find. This consistency reduces the time spent searching for assets and minimizes errors, leading to more efficient asset management and better user experience

Streamlining the Approval Process:
To address bottlenecks in the approval process, DAM software offers customizable workflows that clearly define roles and responsibilities. Stakeholders can be assigned specific tasks within the system, and automated notifications ensure that approvals are completed in a timely manner. This clarity and automation eliminate delays and confusion, keeping projects on track and ensuring that assets meet brand standards before they are distributed.

Managing Asset Volume and System Overload:
As digital assets accumulate, DAM software provides robust archiving and deletion protocols to prevent system overload. Automated archiving features ensure that older, less relevant assets are stored efficiently without cluttering the active workspace. Additionally, advanced search and filtering options allow users to quickly locate current, relevant assets, maintaining an organized and efficient system as the organization grows.

More on DAM Workflows

This post is based on a webinar we hosted with Henry Stewart and industry leader, Theresa Regli, on Content Hubs and Workflow. Watch the full recording here, to learn more about DAM workflows, see a campaign-based workflow in action, and hear how MediaValet customer, Reinsurance Group of America, uses MediaValet and Wrike to drive productivity.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.

FAQ

Implementing a DAM isn’t a one-step solution. It requires ongoing commitment and effort to ensure that adoption and ROI are high. One of the most essential components of an impactful DAM implementation is building a strong taxonomy – the hierarchical categories you use in your library to ensure assets can be found.

In this post, you’ll learn the basics of taxonomy, its impact on DAM, and 5 steps to building a future-proof taxonomy for your organization.

What is a Taxonomy?

Let’s start with the basics: what does a taxonomy mean outside of the context of DAM? Cambridge Dictionary defines taxonomy as “a system for naming and organizing things, especially plants and animals, into groups that share similar qualities”. Simply put, it’s grouping things into multi-level categories, to highlight their similarities.

You’ve likely seen taxonomies used in other business cases, like building a website, but to understand taxonomy, we’re going back even further.

Does this look familiar?

Most people are first introduced to taxonomy in high school biology, where they learned how to name, define and classify living organisms. Using a series of classifications, they’re taught to identify animals, plants, fungi, and more.

For example, here’s the classification of a domestic house cat:

Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Carnivora > Felidae > Felis Domesticus

But now, look at the classification of a mountain lion:

Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Carnivora > Felidae > Felis Concolor

As you can see, a mountain lion and a domestic house cat are identical up until the very last classification. With this, even without any additional information, you could reasonably conclude that a house cat and a mountain lion are closely related. Using this biological taxonomy, you can easily identify the characteristics of living things and understand the relationships between them.

Where Does DAM fit in?

Building a taxonomy for digital asset management works similarly to a biological taxonomy. Using a hierarchical structure, you categorize and classify your assets to ease navigation, identify where any given asset can be used, and identify relationships between assets. It helps your users find assets in a way that makes sense to them.

Why Do We Need a Taxonomy?

Taxonomy is important, as it improves your users’ ability to browse through your DAM library, especially when they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. You can overcome team siloes with your DAM taxonomy. A strong taxonomy ensures your users are able to quickly and intuitively find the assets they need by navigating through a category structure that’s been tailored to their use cases.

The mix of metadata and taxonomy makes a DAM stronger than a typical file-storage system. It upgrades a static, visual asset library into a fully functioning content hub for your organization.

5 Steps to Building a Strong Taxonomy

It’s time to start building your own taxonomy! This can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the size of your organization, the complexity of your assets and the business cases you need to address.

But, regardless of your unique use case, there are 6 common steps to follow that will help you build a winning DAM taxonomy.

1. Get to Know the Users of Your DAM

The first step in building a strong taxonomy for your DAM is to understand how it will be used by each group – your various departments, offices, partners – the works! Book in time to talk with leaders of each group, working to understand their use case, specifically:

• The assets they want to store in the DAM
• Their overall business goals are and how a DAM can help achieve them
• How they can use a DAM for initiatives specific to their role

This will help create a scope for your taxonomy and inspire category decisions. You’ll also be able to identify common assets across users and get a clearer understanding of how each team is interconnected.

2. Take an Audit of Your Existing Assets

Just as important as the use of your assets, is the makeup of the assets themselves. Work with your various teams to consolidate all of the organization’s assets from personal drives, desktop folders, existing storage solutions, etc. into a single area.

Analyze these assets to identify:

• Popular formats (video, photos, PDFs, etc.),
• Common uses (social media, print, etc.), and
• Overarching themes.

From here, you can start to interpret how the assets can be grouped and re-arranged in a way that makes sense for each department.

This also lends the opportunity to decide which assets don’t need to be in the DAM at all. If there are assets that no longer provide value to your organization, it’s a great time to declutter.

3. Start to Brainstorm Taxonomy Options

It’s time to start brainstorming categories for your assets.

There are a few different approaches to creating categories for your taxonomy. Depending on the industry or use case, it can be done by the brand, product line, departments, location, or a mix. While taxonomies across organizations may have similarities, they’re ultimately customized to each individual organization.

Map out and group the asset needs of each stakeholder to get a basic idea of the categories and sub-categories you’ll need. From here, you can start to arrange them in a way that makes the most sense. And remember, less is more when it comes to sub-categories – you only want each parent company to expand about 3-5 sub-categories deep.

Keep in mind, that your taxonomy doesn’t have to follow the same approach throughout. A sales team would likely want their assets categorized by customer type, but a digital marketing team likely needs to find their assets by season or campaign.

4. Finalize and Document Your Proposed Taxonomy

Once you’ve landed on a taxonomy that you’re confident with, it’s time to document it!

We recommend using Microsoft Excel, or something similar, to build out your taxonomy before trying to implement it in your DAM. You’ll be able to catch errors and make edits more easily within Excel, ensuring your taxonomy is optimized.

Once you’ve built out your taxonomy into a document, send it over to your customer success manager. They’ll be able to take what you’ve visualized and make it a reality in your DAM!

5. Audit Your Taxonomy Regularly and Make Updates When Necessary

Your taxonomy is rarely static – it requires adaptations as needs develop, teams are added and use cases change. It’s important to audit your taxonomy regularly (often annually) to ensure it’s being used in the way you intended.

Your taxonomy is just one component of ensuring your DAM is easy to use and driving business value. To ensure your DAM is optimized, make sure you’re also applying best practices for your keywords and attributes.

DAM Taxonomy FAQs

Want to see a DAM taxonomy in action? Check out our free self-guided DAM tour here:

You’ve made it through evaluating vendors, getting approval and committing to a digital asset management system. Now, it’s time to implement!

But where do you start? One of the first steps is understanding the DAM user roles and how to apply them to your users.

In this blog post, we’ll break down the three most essential roles, and the supplementary DAM roles needed to ensure a successful DAM project.

The 3 Essential Roles That Drive Digital Asset Management Success 

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a critical part of modern marketing, communications, and brand operations. But the technology alone doesn’t guarantee success. True DAM adoption and long-term ROI depend on people. 

Specifically, three roles play a vital part in bringing a DAM to life: the Admin Champion, the Strategic Owner, and the Power Users. Let’s explore how these roles contribute to maximizing DAM value post-onboarding. 

DAM User Role #1. The Admin Champion: Your Day-to-Day Driver 

This is your internal system lead – the person who manages permissions, organizes assets, trains users, and ensures governance. They know the platform inside out and act as the first line of support for users. 

A great Admin Champion uses tools to educate users and reporting dashboards to monitor usage and spot bottlenecks. Their attention to structure and usability ensures the DAM stays clean, functional, and accessible to everyone. 

Pro tip: Encourage Admins to host regular office hours or training sessions to keep adoption steady. 

DAM User Role #2: The Strategic Owner: Driving Long-Term Value

While the Admin manages the day-to-day, the Strategic Owner ensures the DAM aligns with the organization’s long-term business goals. This person oversees planning, defines KPIs, and collaborates across departments to grow usage and impact. 

Strategic Owners should create a 30-60-90 day plan to ensure momentum post-onboarding. For example: 
30 days: Add and train users (use SSO for faster onboarding) 
60 days: Integrate with other tools like Adobe or Wrike
90 days: Expand to new use cases (e.g., creating portals for the sales team) 

Pro tip: Tie KPIs to strategic outcomes like faster asset retrieval, higher usage rates, and improved brand consistency. 

DAM User Role #3: Power Users: Departmental Advocates

Your DAM needs champions embedded across departments. These are your Power Users – creative professionals, marketers, and sales reps who use the DAM every day and advocate for its use within their teams. 

Power Users bring the DAM into real workflows. Give them access to advanced features like Portals, Collections, and integrations like CI HUB for Adobe to streamline their creative work. 

Pro tip: Recognize and reward power users who actively promote DAM adoption across the organization.

Supplementary DAM User Roles You Should Know

Beyond the three essential roles, DAM platforms like MediaValet support a full spectrum of user roles to balance access, governance, and control across your teams.

Administrator

Core Function: Has full control of the account, including library and users
Typical Role: Leadership roles in marketing and/or IT

The Administrator has control over all aspects of the digital asset management system, with full feature functionality and administrative capabilities. Administrators need to have a strong understanding of best DAM practices and be fully trained on the various features and operations of the library. They’re crucial for supporting DAM adoption and ensuring the library structure and policies are followed. Depending on the size of the organization, there may be one or more Administrators.

User Administrator

Core Function: Has full control of user accounts, but not the asset library
Typical Role: Leadership roles across various departments

The User Administrator is solely responsible for user accounts within the digital asset management system. They have the same capabilities as a Member, but with the added ability to create, edit and delete users. This role is often used to give leadership roles across various teams the ability to add relevant users from their associated teams, without the added risk of enabling them to alter the library.

Library Administrator

Core Function: Has full control of the asset library, but not user accounts
Typical Roles: Leadership roles across various departments

The Library Administrator has full control of the asset library, but cannot make changes to users. They have the ability to create and update categories and assets, ensuring that the library remains organized and optimized for discoverability. The Library Administrator role is often assigned to leadership roles across various departments, so they can quickly add or update department-specific assets and categories, without burdening the Administrator.

Approver

Core Function: Approves uploads and downloads within the library
Typical Roles: Marketing, Content and Project Managers

The Approver is responsible for approving uploads and downloads requested by Contributors. This role ensures that only the most up-to-date and correct assets are uploaded to the library and that assets are only being used in approved ways. The Approver is role is critical in maintaining brand standards and consistency and is often held by management-level positions.

Contributor

Core Function: View, upload and download renditions, with approval
Typical Roles: External photographers, videographers and designers

The Contributor role has the ability to upload and download assets but requires approval from an Approver or Administrator. This role is typically held by users like designers, photographers and videographers, that need consistent, but limited access to assets for editing and design purposes, but needs an added level of security.

Member

Core Function: View and download renditions of assets (but not originals)
Typical Roles: Most general roles within the company, including sales and marketing

The Member is one of the most popular roles and accounts for the majority of users. This role has self-serve access to view and download the renditions of assets. This role is typically assigned to all users that need access to the DAM for “general use”.

Guest

Core Function: View only, with no downloading or uploading capabilities
Typical Roles: External partners, agencies or volunteers

The Guest role is often assigned to both internal or external users. Guests have the ability to view assets, but can’t download or edit them. The Guest user role is typically used for sharing assets with various departments, partners or agencies when feedback or final approval is needed.

How to Measure DAM User Success 

What gets measured gets managed. Once your DAM is up and running, success planning should be an ongoing effort tied to business outcomes, user behavior, and operational efficiency. It’s important to define what success looks like for your organization and track progress using both qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Quantitative Metrics

• Number of Assets: Monitor growth over time to understand content volume.
• Active Users: Measure how many team members are logging in and engaging with the platform.
• Adoption Rate: Track the percentage of invited users who are actively using the DAM.
• Search and Retrieval Efficiency: Evaluate how quickly users can find what they need.
• Storage Used vs. Capacity: Helps in understanding asset usage patterns and scalability needs.
• Download/Share Frequency: Indicates how often assets are being used externally.

Qualitative Metrics

• User Satisfaction: Gather feedback through surveys or interviews about DAM usability and usefulness.
• Ease of Access: Measure how intuitive and accessible the platform feels to new and existing users.
• Integration Satisfaction: Assess how well the DAM integrates with tools like Adobe, Wrike, and others.
• Brand Consistency: Evaluate whether approved assets are being used across channels consistently.

Reporting and Stakeholder Communication

Use DAM reporting dashboards to visualize progress, surface team-specific insights, and make data-informed decisions. Regular account reviews with your Customer Success Manager can help tie system performance to business goals and prepare updates for internal stakeholders.

Pro tip: Document success milestones and challenges along the way to inform future planning and onboarding strategies.

DAM success isn’t just about the technology – it’s about the team that activates it. By identifying your Admin Champion, Strategic Owner, Power Users, and configuring the right mix of supporting roles, you can create a DAM environment that scales and delivers measurable value.

Need help building your DAM team or setting role permissions? Connect with us today!

FAQ

In today’s digital-first world, the management of digital assets has become a cornerstone of successful business operations. Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems serve as the backbone for storing, organizing, and distributing digital content, from images and videos to documents and beyond.

And as businesses continue to grow their digital footprint, the need for robust, secure, and scalable DAM solutions has never been more critical. This is where Microsoft Azure and its cloud-based capabilities come into play, offering an unparalleled foundation for secure and efficient digital asset management.

Microsoft Azure: A Foundation for Secure DAM

Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive cloud computing service that provides businesses with the computing power, storage, and networking capabilities needed to run a wide range of applications. Azure stands out for its global infrastructure, offering scalable and reliable cloud services across multiple data centers worldwide. This global presence ensures that businesses can manage and access their digital assets quickly and efficiently, regardless of their location.

Security is a paramount concern in the digital age, and Azure addresses this concern head-on. With advanced encryption, comprehensive identity and access management, and rigorous network security protocols, Azure creates a secure environment for businesses to manage their digital assets. These security measures are continuously updated to respond to emerging threats, providing a secure foundation for DAM systems built on Azure.

Check out some frequently asked questions on Microsoft Azure for DAM:

The Security Advantage of Azure-based DAM

In the realm of digital asset management, security is not just a feature; it’s a necessity. DAM systems house a wealth of sensitive information and intellectual property, making them prime targets for cyber threats.

Azure-based DAM solutions leverage Azure’s robust security framework, providing an added layer of protection for digital assets. This includes end-to-end encryption for data in transit and at rest, advanced threat detection, and a comprehensive set of compliance certifications.

By building on Azure, DAM vendors like MediaValet can assure their clients of the highest security standards, safeguarding their digital assets against unauthorized access and cyber threats.

Check out some FAQs on how Microsoft Azure enables better DAM security:

100% Cloud-based DAMs vs. Other Types

Digital Asset Management solutions can be broadly categorized into three types: on-premises, hybrid, and 100% cloud-based.

While on-premises and hybrid solutions have their merits, 100% cloud-based DAMs, especially those hosted on platforms like Azure, offer distinct advantages:

• Security: Cloud-based DAMs benefit from the high security standards of cloud platforms. Azure, for instance, provides continuous security updates and state-of-the-art protocols, offering better protection than most businesses can achieve in-house.
• Scalability: As businesses grow, so do their digital asset collections. Cloud-based DAMs can easily scale to accommodate this growth, without the need for physical infrastructure expansion.
• Accessibility: With remote work becoming the norm, cloud-based DAMs offer unparalleled access to digital assets from anywhere, at any time, fostering collaboration and efficiency.
• Cost: Cloud-based DAMs often come with lower upfront costs and reduced IT overhead, as the need for in-house maintenance and hardware is significantly reduced.

Interested in seeing MediaValet in action? Take our free, self-guided tour here:

The integration of Microsoft Azure into digital asset management represents a leap forward in the security, scalability, and efficiency of managing digital assets.

Azure’s robust infrastructure and advanced security features provide a solid foundation for DAM systems, ensuring that businesses can manage their digital assets safely and efficiently.

MediaValet, with its Azure-based platform, exemplifies the best in class for secure digital asset management. Recognized for its top-tier security by SecurityScorecard, MediaValet offers businesses peace of mind, knowing that their digital assets are protected by the best measures available.

Here are some FAQs on why MediaValet chooses to partner with Microsoft Azure:

Spotlight on MediaValet: Leading with Top-Tier Security

When it comes to securing digital assets, MediaValet stands out as a leader in the DAM industry. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, MediaValet is recognized as the #1 DAM vendor for security by SecurityScorecard, a testament to its commitment to providing top-tier security for its clients’ digital assets.

MediaValet is:

• SOC 2 certified by PwC,
• GDPR, CCPA and PIPEDA compliant, and can assist customers with DPA (Data Processing Agreement) requirements,
• HIPAA compliant and able to assist with any BAA (Business Associate Agreement) requirements, and
• Built on Microsoft Azure, which is compliant and/or certified with more than 90 regulatory standards.

MediaValet’s security features are comprehensive and include:

• End-to-End Encryption: Ensuring that all data, whether in transit between the client and the server or at rest within the system, is encrypted, making it inaccessible to unauthorized parties.
• Regular Security Audits: MediaValet undergoes regular third-party security audits and maintains strict compliance with industry standards, ensuring that its security practices are always up to date and effective.
• Customizable Access Controls: Clients can define access rights and authentication measures, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive digital assets.
• Azure’s Security Enhancements: Leveraging Azure’s security capabilities, MediaValet offers enhanced protection against threats, including sophisticated encryption and network security measures.

“As a massive organization, we have very strict procurement guidelines and security requirements for vendors… MediaValet stood out immediately as a front runner.” James Carter, Experian

By choosing MediaValet, businesses can rest assured that their digital assets are managed in one of the most secure environments available today, backed by the power of Microsoft Azure.

As digital assets continue to play a critical role in business operations, investing in a secure, scalable, and efficient DAM solution is not just an option; it’s a necessity. Azure-based DAM solutions like MediaValet offer businesses a forward-looking approach to digital asset management, ensuring that their assets are not only well-organized but also securely managed against the evolving landscape of cyber threats.

To learn more about how Azure can enhance your digital asset management and to explore MediaValet’s secure DAM solutions, contact our team for a personalized demo. Elevate your digital asset management today with the security and efficiency of Microsoft Azure.

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution enables an organization to better organize, store, and distribute digital assets, such as images, videos, audio files, documents, and other content. When it comes to unlocking the true value of DAM, however, we need to really delve into DAM ROI and how a DAM system can impact an entire organization.

Today, organizations are drowning in digital content—marketing creatives, video clips, legal assets, localized collateral—and without a strategy, assets become lost, duplicated, or misused. What started as a designer’s simple library has become a powerful enterprise system of record. DAM now powers marketing agility, brand consistency, legal compliance, and operational efficiency across the board.

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of DAM and how, when used across an organization, DAM can drive real ROI and business impact.

What Is DAM & Why Does it Matter?

A DAM platform is a centralized, metadata-enriched repository for digital assets—images, videos, documents, logos—equipped with intelligent features like versioning, permissions, AI tagging, and integrations.

The primary purpose of a DAM is to increase efficiency, productivity, and collaboration by enabling users to find and share digital assets quickly and easily. However, the benefits of adopting a DAM system go much further than efficiency. In fact, a DAM can provide much more value to an organization than what first meets the eye.

Why Implement a DAM Now?

• Content volume has skyrocketed.
• Teams are distributed and working across tools and time zones.
• Brand consistency and compliance (e.g., logos, trademarks) are under scrutiny.

DAM solves these challenges by delivering searchability, control, and governance—and by becoming a foundation for productivity across marketing, legal, IT, and beyond.

The Organization-Wide Value of DAM

In an earlier post, we deep-dive into the real business benefits of DAM, but if you don’t have time to read that blog post, here’s a summary of how DAM impacts a business:

DAM ROI Defined

Return on investment is the financial benefit that an organization receives from implementing a new system or software. However, when it comes to a solution like a DAM, qualitative benefits don’t always create a compelling enough case for executive buy-in. You need hard numbers to help justify the spending.

It’s essential to understand that the efficiencies a DAM provides create deep ripples in the core of any organization. By facilitating efficient and effective teams, a DAM can impact:

1. Increased Time savings
2. Improved Brand consistency
3. Reduced Legal Risk

According to the G2 DAM Vendor Comparison Report, MediaValet customers achieve ROI faster than any of our top competitors — with an average time to ROI of just 10 months. Compare that to 14 – 17 months for others in the market, and it’s clear: MediaValet delivers value quickly. (If you’d like to compare DAM vendors, we cover 6 different DAM platforms in this blog post.)

Based on findings from the 2025 DAM Trends Report, MediaValet customers: 

• Save 13 hours per week on asset related tasks 

• Reallocate 78% of their resources to other high-value tasks 

These time savings result in real-world cost reductions and productivity gains across marketing, brand, and creative teams. 

DAM ROI – The Financial Impacts

1. Increased Time Savings

One of the most significant benefits of a DAM system is increased efficiency and time savings. By centralizing your digital assets, you can reduce the time it takes to find, share, and collaborate on them. This increased efficiency can result in significant time savings for your organization, which can translate into financial benefits.

Since implementing a MediaValet DAM, The University of Windsor has saved an incredible 35 hours a week when it comes to finding and sharing digital assets.

As the Digital Media Producer at the university, Naomi Pelkey told us how she would “sometimes get bottled down for a whole week just dealing with photo requests. Now, at most, I’ll spend about five hours a week!”

Learn more about how The University of Windsor saved time with MediaValet.

2. Improved Brand Consistency

Another benefit of a DAM system is improved brand consistency. With a DAM system, you can ensure that all your digital assets are up-to-date and meet your brand guidelines. This consistency can result in increased brand recognition, customer loyalty, and ultimately, revenue.

Until they became a customer in 2016, A&W, Canada’s leading hamburger franchise was struggling to maintain brand consistency.

Now, despite having more than 950 locations across Canada, A&W has used its MediaValet DAM to ensure the integrity of brand assets being shared across the country.

They told us, “Now that everyone has instant access to the assets they need, we can spend less time on administrative tasks and focus more on developing innovative menu items, advertisements, and initiatives for the A&W brand.”

Read more about how A&W benefitted from MediaValet.

3. Reduced Legal and Security Risks

By implementing a DAM, you can reduce legal and security risks associated with the misuse or unauthorized use of digital assets. Legal fees associated with copyright infringement can be significantly reduced with a DAM in place.

But security is not just about protecting yourself from the outside world, it’s also about creating safeguards internally. You can track and manage who can access your assets. The extensive permission capabilities MediaValet offers ensure that assets are only used by the right people at the right time.

Experian has incredibly strict security guidelines in place when reviewing technologies and the MediaValet DAM met all of their requirements.

The global brand manager at Experian told us how we became a front-runner: “With clear requirements in hand, we were quickly able to [narrow our list down to] MediaValet.”

Read more about Experian’s use of MediaValet here.

Calculating DAM ROI: Metrics That Matter

Interested in calculating your own the value of a DAM for your organization? Use our free DAM ROI Calculator here

Tailoring your DAM Value Case By Stakeholder

A strong DAM business case speaks directly to the priorities of each stakeholder group. Use the table below to align DAM benefits with what matters most across your organization.

Read our blog post here to learn how to follow more steps to build your business case for DAM.

DAM ROI is so much more than the ability to easily search, discover, and distribute your assets. Organizations can see significant financial benefits with a DAM system in place.

By understanding the financial benefits of a DAM system, you can make a compelling case for its adoption and ensure that your organization is making the most of its digital assets.

If you want more information on how MediaValet could be of value to your organization, reach out today to set up a conversation!

These days, patients are evaluating their healthcare providers on perceived value and quality, rather than just location. They’re comparing prices, reviews, and sites to ensure they find a healthcare provider that meets their unique needs. It’s made branding and brand trust an incredibly important part of the healthcare system. That’s why, finding a DAM for healthcare organizations is mission critical.

With this change, having a strong, customer-centric focus is critical to keeping patients engaged and happy. For marketing teams, this translates into an increased demand for content that showcases their knowledge, transparency, and success. From inspiring videos to comprehensive online help desks, healthcare providers need to consistently develop on-brand content that provides value to their patients.

This increase in content creation has made a digital asset management system (DAM) a must-have in the healthcare sector. But, with more stringent security and compliance requirements than other industries, it can be a challenge to find a DAM that will meet your needs.

This post will help identify the key features to look for when buying a DAM for a healthcare organization.

Key Features in a DAM for Healthcare

The healthcare industry has very specific pain points and requirements, making it difficult to find a DAM provider that understands your needs and delivers a viable long-term solution. Here are five features to look for:

Healthcare DAM Feature #1: Comprehensive Compliance

One of the key features any healthcare organization should look for in a DAM provider is a HIPAA compliance certification – more specifically, the vendor’s willingness to enter into a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA). By entering into a BAA, the DAM provider is stating that they will comply with all HIPAA standards and follow the rules & regulations required to properly safeguard any personal health information stored. Additionally, this holds the provider liable for any breaches of data caused by the DAM and makes them responsible for following the steps to properly report any breach.

Healthcare DAM Feature #2: High Security

Keeping personal health information secure is becoming an increasingly difficult task, with cyber-attacks becoming more and more frequent. In fact, according to Black Book Market Research, 93% of healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach in the last 3 years. In response, hospitals & other HIPAA-responsible companies are becoming the subject of more frequent audits and increasing fines.

To protect your media assets, it’s important to find a highly secure DAM system. Look for a DAM that uses a well-established and reliable cloud platform with a reputation for outstanding security, such as Microsoft Azure. That way, your company can rest assured that your assets are held securely at all times.

The team at UCSF is using their MediaValet DAM in a truly exceptional way – for security and compliance.

To take photos or video during a surgery or procedure, UCSF must have a signed patient consent form. Previously they had paper forms but now, they upload the form to the DAM and connect it with the photos and footage from the surgery through Related Assets!

The team then applies custom permission rules to user groups to ensure that only authorized people have access to this content.

“This has saved so much time tracking down consent forms. Now, when I search the DAM for a specific surgery photos or video – I know if the person has consented and can quickly share and distribute content where needed!”

Read the full UCSF DAM story here.

Healthcare DAM Feature #3: Custom Access Permissions

With various locations, partners, and departments, it can be challenging to ensure each person is using photos, videos, presentations, and more that have been explicitly approved for use. But, controlling access to your media assets can be critical – especially given the sensitivity around personal health information.

For example, in 2012, a Los Angeles-based physical therapy provider broke HIPAA privacy rules, when they posted patient testimonials on their website. By using the patients’ full names and headshots without prior approval, the business was in direct violation of HIPAA Privacy Rules. The violation resulted in a $25,000 settlement.

To prevent incidents like the above, it’s important to only look at DAM vendors who offer advanced permission settings. With custom permission capabilities, you can segment your users by location, department, seniority, and more to ensure each user will only access and use assets that are pre-approved for use.

Healthcare DAM Feature #4: Advanced Search Capabilities

Arguably one of the most important features when selecting a DAM (in any industry) is its ability to optimize searchability. While it’s standard for vendors to offer keywording capabilities, some offer additional features to improve productivity.

Advanced search filters allow you to filter your search by rating, file type, color or text identified in an asset, and more. For example, searching for an image that contains a group of nurses in blue uniforms.

Artificial intelligence, which labels your assets with AI-generated tags (either generic or customized to your business) and tag people with Face Recognition to not only save time when uploading assets but also enhance your search results, and save you money; 83% of DAM users who implement Face Recognition have saved money.

Healthcare DAM Feature #5: Strong User Experience

No matter the level of security, compliance, or functionality, if a system isn’t used, it’s of no use. When looking for a DAM, it’s crucial to evaluate the vendor’s user interface and approach to customer support, onboarding, and training. This will help determine how easily your users will adopt the system, and what their overall experience will be. Prioritize vendors with an attractive, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface. Then, ask for reference customers from the vendor that can talk to about their experience in these areas.

MediaValet’s new, intuitive digital asset management system user interface has been built on customer feedback and ensures that teams across the globe can easily discover, streamline, and control their assets, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

You can check out a free, self-guided tour of the MediaValet platform here:

Finding the Right DAM for Healthcare

These are just a few things to look for in your hunt for a DAM for healthcare. If you’re interested in seeing how other healthcare organizations succeed with DAM, check out our story on Jones Healthcare.

Since implementing their MediaValet DAM in 2020, the team at Jones Healthcare has greatly improved their asset workflows. But further to that, they’ve seen a massive turnaround on both branding and security. With their DAM, they have:

• Improved communication & brand consistency
• Enhanced internal and external collaboration
• Improved compliance with industry regulations

Read the full Jones Healthcare DAM story here.

Ready to start your healthcare DAM journey? Download the DAM Buying Guide here:

A digital asset manager is essential in today’s content-driven organizations.

As digital content production accelerates across industries, organizations are turning to Digital Asset Management (DAM) software to bring order and efficiency to their content operations. But while software provides the infrastructure, it’s the Digital Asset Manager—the person—who ensures the system delivers lasting value.

What is digital asset management?

A DAM solution enables an organization to better organize, store, and distribute digital assets, such as images, videos, audio files, documents, and other content.

DAM software is becoming more widely used throughout a variety of industries and organizations. Some organizations employ a full-time digital asset manager due to the enormous amount of digital assets being created and used daily by businesses.

What is a Digital Asset Manager?

A digital asset manager is a team member who oversees, implements and maintains the DAM; they are not the software itself (more on that here). The responsibilities of a digital asset manager include acquiring, organizing and cataloguing digital assets. They also oversee the security of digital assets, such as:

• Photos,
• Videos,
• Graphics,
• PDFs,
• Presentations,
• And more.

What Does a Digital Asset Manager Do?

Since digital asset managers are essentially the administrators of DAM systems, you’ll often see their roles include governance – overseeing the guidance of the rest of the team, enforcement of DAM best practices, and even research and development. The day-to-day role of a digital asset manager includes managing all digital asset management tasks, including but not limited to:

• Managing asset access (setting up user groups and permissions)
• Encouraging user adoption
• Proving DAM training and retraining users
• Implementing and enforcing metadata strategies
• Organizing and cataloguing assets
• File naming and maintenance
• Optimization of asset metadata
• Approving (or denying) asset usage or changes
• Ensuring alignment with security and compliance
• Testing, updating and auditing policies

A digital asset manager typically works in the IT department under a senior director or manager; working closely with legal, creative, marketing and sales departments.

How To Become a Digital Asset Manager

The core skills needed to become a digital asset manager include:

1. Project Management Skills: The role intersects with many different departments, often with various projects happening simultaneously. Excellent organizational and time management skills are a must.
2. Technical Skills: Familiarity with certain software and systems (such as CMS, PIM, ERP and project management tools) and markup and programming languages will often be needed to administer the DAM and set up certain integrations.
3. Interpersonal Skills: Because they will work with various departments across an organization, and also trains those who will use the DAM. They must have excellent people and communication skills.
4. Analytical Skills: As the individual in charge of file naming, organizational structure, maintenance and cataloguing, an analytical way of thinking is crucial to this position.

Role requirements include formal education and experience. Typically, a degree in information science, computer science or a related field is preferred, along with one to three years of related experience in an entry-level role.

Entry-level roles could include IT support, digital asset coordinator or product management. According to PayScale, the typical career path could include moving on to web development, then to software engineering, front-end development or senior web development.

Real-World Impact: Why Companies Hire DAM Managers

Any kind or sized company using a DAM could benefit from a full-time digital asset manager in the role. However, larger companies with more sizable creative departments typically have the most to benefit from hiring a dedicated person to manage the system, as a high volume of assets are being made and distributed every day.

They bring structure to content chaos, ensuring that:

• Teams find the right asset, the first time
• Content workflows move faster, with fewer bottlenecks
• Branding and compliance stay intact across regions and teams
• Assets are reused and repurposed strategically, reducing content costs

Even smaller teams can benefit from having a dedicated DAM administrator, especially as content volume grows or remote collaboration increases.

Is Now the Time for a Full Time DAM Admin?

The landscape of digital asset management has changed. It’s not enough for enterprise organizations with various departments using a DAM to try and organize themselves and the system.

The digital asset manager acts as the system’s administrator, overseeing, implementing, training and retraining everyone using the DAM. The right person in this role can help an organization get the most from their DAM across all departments, by implementing effective governance, improving productivity and speeding up workflow

Digital Asset Management or DAM systems are no longer just storage vaults for brand files and media—they’ve evolved into intelligent content hubs that can be used across entire organizations.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), modern DAM solutions are automating time-consuming tasks, personalizing user experiences, and unlocking deeper content insights. In this post, we explore the core AI features that are turning traditional DAM systems into powerful engines for productivity, brand control, and creative acceleration. 

Understanding DAM Systems 

At their core, DAM systems help organizations store, organize, retrieve, and share digital assets—from images and videos to documents and brand templates. But traditional DAM systems, while essential, often required significant manual effort for metadata tagging, content discovery, and asset governance. 

Challenges of Traditional DAM: 

• Time-consuming asset tagging and categorization 

• Difficulty locating the right content quickly 

• Inconsistent metadata and file naming 

• Lack of insights into asset performance or usage 

That’s where AI steps in. 

How AI Transforms DAM Systems 

Artificial Intelligence enhances a DAM by automating and augmenting how assets are managed and used. Rather than just storing files, AI-powered DAMs understand them—making it easier to find, organize, and activate content at scale. 

Benefits of AI in DAM: 

• Reduces manual work through automation 

• Improves discoverability with intelligent tagging 

• Enhances governance with auto-detection of duplicates or outdated assets 

• Increases ROI by surfacing high-performing, reusable content 

Core AI Features in Modern DAM Systems 

Here are the most impactful AI capabilities to look for in a DAM: 

1. Automated Metadata Tagging 

AI can scan and analyze image, video, and document files to generate metadata tags—automatically. This includes recognizing objects, faces, text, or even context within assets. 

Example: Upload a video, and the DAM suggests tags like “interview,” “indoor,” “branding,” or “CEO” without any manual input. 

2. Intelligent Search and Natural Language Processing (NLP) 

AI improves search accuracy through semantic understanding. Users can type “CEO photos in last campaign” and get relevant results—even if the filenames are vague. 

3. Content Recommendations 

AI tracks usage patterns and suggests related or high-performing assets for similar projects—ensuring the best content is reused, not remade. 

4. Auto-Detection of Duplicates and Near-Duplicates 

Using AI algorithms, DAMs can identify visually similar assets to reduce clutter and prevent outdated versions from being reused. 

5. Transcription and Language-Aware Capabilities 

AI can transcribe video/audio files and auto-generate subtitles. It can also detect language, helping global teams filter content by region or language spoken. 

6. AI-Powered Governance 

Set rules and let AI detect policy violations—like expired logos or old disclaimers—before assets are downloaded or published. 

Comparing Leading AI-Powered DAM Systems 

Data based on publicly available information as of April 2025. 

While all platforms offer these features, the depth and implementation may vary. It’s advisable to consult each provider for specific capabilities and integrations.

Interested in learning more about how MediaValet compares to other DAM platforms?

Real-World Use Cases of AI Powered DAM

🎬 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) manages an extensive archive of digital assets, including photographs, videos, and promotional materials from decades of events. To efficiently organize and retrieve these assets, TIFF adopted MediaValet’s AI-powered DAM system.

Key Outcomes:

• AI-Powered Metadata Tagging: MediaValet’s AI capabilities automatically generate descriptive tags for assets, capturing critical details such as context, people, and keywords. This automation has significantly improved searchability and reduced manual tagging efforts.
• Facial Recognition Technology: With thousands of celebrity and event images, TIFF utilizes MediaValet’s facial recognition feature to tag and retrieve photos effortlessly. The system has identified over 10,000 faces, with more than 3,500 successfully tagged, streamlining the process of locating specific images.
• Duplicate Asset Reduction: By identifying and eliminating nearly 500,000 duplicate assets, TIFF reduced its digital library size by 25%. This cleanup not only saved storage space but also established a single source of truth for their assets, enhancing accuracy and usability.
• Improved Rights Management: The integration of AI-generated metadata has enabled TIFF to tie licenses and restrictions directly to assets. This advancement ensures compliance, reduces errors, and empowers teams to confidently utilize their digital assets.

Through the implementation of MediaValet’s AI-driven DAM system, TIFF has achieved significant improvements in asset management efficiency, searchability, and compliance, ensuring that their rich history of film and culture is preserved and accessible for years to come

Read their full story here.

Checklist: Evaluating AI Features in Your DAM 

Here’s what to consider when choosing an AI-powered DAM system: 

✅ Does it support AI auto-tagging for all media types? 
✅ Can it detect and suggest near-duplicates? 
✅ Does it offer AI-driven content recommendations? 
✅ Are there features like transcription or facial recognition? 
✅ Does the AI adapt based on your usage data? 
✅ Are AI features customizable for your brand’s taxonomy? 

AI is no longer a futuristic add-on to DAM systems—it’s the foundation of modern content operations. From saving time to improving asset discoverability and governance, the right AI-powered DAM transforms how teams collaborate and scale their content strategy. 

Want to see how MediaValet looks? Take a self-guided tour here:

Are you exploring options for a digital asset management system? Deciding on the right DAM solution can be overwhelming with the growing market offering numerous options.

DAM systems equipped with auto tagging, machine learning, and video and audio intelligence can enable organizations to gain real competitive advantage.

But which one is right for your business? Let’s explore some of the best DAM solutions on the market, and compare Canto alternatives.

We’ll cover:

• MediaValet vs Canto
• Canto’s Pros and Cons
• The Top Canto Alternatives
• How to Choose the Right DAM

MediaValet vs. Canto

G2, the largest and most trusted third-party software and professional services review site, ranks MediaValet as a “Market Leader” in the DAM space, driven by high customer satisfaction ratings and a significant market presence. “Market Leader” represents the top level in G2’s ranking system, indicating products that are highly rated by users and have substantial market presence.

Who is MediaValet?

Voted as a leader in the Enterprise Digital Asset Management 2025 space by G2 Crowd, MediaValet makes assets instantly more searchable, discoverable and sharable.

With a roster of customers across numerous industries like higher education, nonprofit, manufacturing and countless other industries, MediaValet stands at the forefront of the enterprise, cloud-native, software-as-a-service digital asset management and creative operations industries.

Built exclusively on Microsoft Azure and available across 61 Microsoft data center regions in 140 countries around the world, MediaValet delivers unparalleled enterprise-class security, reliability, redundancy, compliance, and scalability; while offering the largest global footprint of any cloud DAM solution.

MediaValet is the #1 DAM on the market for security. SecurityScorecard rates MediaValet 98/100.

Based on the 2025 DAM Trends Report, MediaValet customers report incredible achievements with their DAM:

• 82% achieve ROI in just 1 year
• save an average of 13.5 hours per week on asset-related tasks
• 89% are highly satisfied with their DAM

The MediaValet Difference: Lightening Fast ROI

Based on G2 data, MediaValet customers achieve ROI 5 months faster than Canto users.

These time savings contribute to significant business benefits, including enhanced brand consistency, increased productivity, and improved team collaboration, with 76% of our customers reporting cost savings in asset creation.

Check out MediaValet in action with our free, self-guided DAM tour!

How does MediaValet compare to Canto?

MediaValet vs. Canto: Support

MediaValet provides dedicated onboarding and customer success managers for each client, ensuring a seamless transition and ongoing support. Our 24/7 support system is a major benefit for global teams that need constant access.

According the to 2025 DAM Trends Report, MediaValet customers are highly satisfied with the DAM. In fact, we score a 4.3 out of 5 stars!

“As an administrator I enjoy the fact that customer support is excellent!” MidMarket Director of Marketing and Sales, G2

MediaValet vs. Canto: Brand Guidelines

A DAM system is critical in maintaining brand guidelines across an organization, aligning all marketing and communication efforts with the brand’s core values. G2 recognizes MediaValet as the leading DAM for managing enterprise-level brand guidelines.

MediaValet helps you to both connect and protect your brand with Branded Portals, CDN Linking, and Lightboxes as well as clear and comprehensive asset rights labels. It enables organizations to ensure brand consistency and compliancy.

“We have found great value in the branded portal functionality!” Mid Market user, G2

MediaValet vs. Canto: Product Direction

At MediaValet, the primary goal is to ensure each new feature or update addresses customer challenges. Our proactive approach to product development, which incorporates customer feedback into our roadmap, is reflected in our latest innovation, MediaValet Templating powered by Marq.

Customers are invited to frequent product update webinars and have access to the product roadmap for full transparency on what’s coming.

“It’s great to have a DAM that is constantly evolving into a better platform and to know the software is not intended to be a one size fits all for every company.” User in higher education, G2

MediaValet vs. Canto: Video

Did you know that 93% of marketers are embracing video content to accomplish higher engagement and ROI. Video content needs a secure, functional repository. And based on the DAM Trends Report, more than half of MediaValet customers are storing video files in their DAM system.

MediaValet is a pioneer in Audio/ Visual intelligence (AVI), enabling automatic generation of transcripts and translations in over 60 languages. Our AI-enhanced auto-tagging and time-stamped metadata make locating specific frames or videos effortless.

“MediaValet has [made] internal communication regarding videos much simpler.” SMB Director of Sports Broadcasting, G2

MediaValet vs. Canto: Analytics

MediaValet’s analytics tools offer detailed insights into asset performance and user engagement, aiding businesses in optimizing their content strategies. Our real-time dashboards provide valuable metrics on user, asset, and portal engagement.

The reporting functionality within MediaValet helps teams to monitor actions within the DAM to identify power users, schedule training sessions, and maximize its ROI.

Canto Pros and Cons

Canto, with over 30 years in the industry, is a well-known DAM solution, especially for smaller organizations seeking a cost-effective option.

Here’s a more detailed look at the advantages and challenges of opting for Canto as a DAM provider:

Pro – Ease of Use

Canto has a straightforward interface and user-centric design, making it accessible for those with minimal technical expertise. This ease of use can be beneficial for smaller teams that may not have dedicated IT support and need a DAM system they can operate independently.

Con – Scalability and Features

While Canto provides essential DAM functionalities effectively, it may encounter limitations when scaling to meet the demands of larger enterprises or more complex use cases.

When compared to more robust systems like MediaValet, Canto might lack some of the advanced features needed for extensive enterprise use. For instance, more sophisticated analytics tools, integration capabilities, or customization options that go beyond the basic offerings of Canto.

“What do you dislike about Canto?

Feature Scalability. . . it also lacks some extra features that make the other offers so enticing.” SMB E-Learning User, G2

Explore More Canto Alternatives

Brandfolder

When considering Canto alternatives, Brandfolder will always show up as a solid DAM competitor. Boasting an incredible strong market presence, and massive client logos, Brandfolder is usually better suited to larger organizations.

Where do they win against Canto? According to Gartner, Brandfolder wins when it comes to scalability and pricing flexibility.

Interested in more information on Brandfolder alternatives? Check out this post.

Acquia DAM (Widen)

Another strong Canto alternative is Acquia DAM (widen) which has been available for more than 2 decades on the market.

When compared by Gartner reviews, Acquia comes out on top with better service and support, scalability, and pricing.

Bynder

When considering Canto alternatives, Bynder will always show up as a competitor. One of the most recognizable DAMs in the industry, Bynder client list includes some huge brands and organizations.

Where do they win against Canto? According to Gartner, Bynder is a better choice for organizations that need to scale, need significant product training, and more comprehensive integration options.

Interested in more information on Bynder alternatives? Check out this post.

What Should you Look for in a Digital Asset Management System?

When choosing a digital asset management solution, it’s crucial to consider your organization’s unique needs.

• How much content will the DAM need to store?
• Are there systems that will become redundant when we implement a DAM?
• We have multiple internal and external users – how will we support and manage them all?

Your buying team needs to define your requirements and identify non-negotiable features. But as a rule of thumb, there are several key factors that will ensure a DAM can meet your more general organizational needs effectively:

Security Features: Protecting your digital assets from unauthorized access and data breaches is paramount. Look for a system that offers strong security measures such as encrypted data transfer, secure access controls, and regular backups. These features help safeguard your assets and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

Ease of Use: The DAM system should have an intuitive interface that allows users of all technical levels to access and manage assets efficiently. This includes easy navigation, quick access to files, and simple tools for uploading, tagging, and organizing content. A user-friendly interface reduces the learning curve and helps in achieving higher adoption rates across the organization.

Advanced Search Capabilities: With the vast amount of digital assets that organizations accumulate, the ability to quickly find an exact file is crucial. Look for a DAM system that offers robust search functions including metadata tagging, keyword searches, and advanced filtering options. This ensures that users can retrieve assets efficiently without having to sift through irrelevant files.

Integration Capabilities: The DAM system should seamlessly integrate with other tools and systems used by your organization, such as content management systems (CMS), marketing automation tools, and creative software. Integration facilitates a more streamlined workflow and ensures that assets are easily accessible across different platforms and departments.

Scalability: As your organization grows, so will your digital asset needs. A good DAM system should be scalable, accommodating increased storage needs and additional users without performance issues. This includes having flexible cloud storage options and the ability to handle various file types and sizes.

Support and Maintenance: Reliable technical support and regular updates are vital to maintaining a DAM system’s efficiency and security. Choose a provider that offers excellent customer support, training resources, and proactive maintenance to ensure that the system continues to meet your needs over time.