Digital Asset Management (DAM) is bascially content management for non-text assets such as video, pictures and podcasts. In years past, unless you were a media company, most organizations didn't have to worry about buying a separate system to manage digital content. Now, however, as more enterprises build larger inventories of digital assets, it makes more sense to at least begin thinking about systems to help handle those assets. ABI Research just released a new report on the Digital Asset Management industry, which is predicting the it will grow to $1 billion by 2013. Before you get too excited about that number, consider a recent report on mobile content [1] predicted $8 billion dollars in related sales this year alone. The DAM industry, while growing, is still far behind other types of content management.

Digital content is markedly different from text content in that it's harder to find because it lacks obvious textual clues. It relies more on the creator (or the DAM) to generate meaningful metadata about the asset to provide a way to access the media again in the future. Many DAMs integrate directly inside creative applications such as Adobe Photoshop, making it easier to for the content creators to build meaningful metadata when they create the asset. DAM also comes into play after creation, when you need to manage and store the asset. The management also involves making sure larger videos and high resolution images don't end up clogging your network pipes.

The DAM market may be small compared to other kinds of content management, but with growing media inventories, it's really something all companies need to be thinking about. In the short term, your CMS will likely be able to handle the extra volume, but if you begin to build a substantial media collection, you may want to look at one of the companies referenced in the ABI report.

For more information:
-  see the ABI Report Summary [2]

Related Articles:
MarketWatch article on competing report from WinterGreen Research [3]