Updated DAM Vendor Evaluations...and Evaluation Criteria
Last week, along with the debut of our new video-focused Broadcast & Media Asset Management research, we re-oriented our DAM research to focus more specifically on brand asset management and the marketing supply chain.
Updated Evaluation Criteria
Advertising agencies, CMOs, marketing managers, and DAM administrators: you are our primary DAM subscription customers, and you asked us to look more deeply into how well the tools were meeting your specific needs. You've also asked us to cover more mid-market offerings that start in the tens of thousands of dollar cost range rather than hundreds of thousands. We now evaluate 16 smaller/mid-market vendors, as well as two open source projects, to help those of you with smaller budgets make the best-fit choice for you.
But with this update, we're also looking at products in a different light. We're taking a broader look at what marketers need, more towards the farther ends of the marketing supply chain, where assets are produced and deployed, rather than just those phases in the middle where almost-complete or completed assets get shepherded through an approval process.
We've conducted more extensive research over the last year with point-of-sale packaging designers, catalog producers, photographers, and printers -- all of whom are putting assets into or getting things out of DAM systems -- to understand how well the tools are meeting their needs.
No Ideal Solution
"Can we create, manage, personalize and deploy multi-channel marketing assets all with one software package?" is a question I'm often asked. The answer is no.
Some vendors focus on digital forms of marketing and integrating with WCXM or campaign management systems. Others came of age in the catalog world. Still others are focused on print advertising, from the magazine to the highway billboard. No one vendor does it all well, and even if you go towards the upper end of the market, those vendors require you to buy multiple tools and components to keep the chain together.
Updated Evaluations
In this latest research edition, we've updated the DAM technology overview chapters extensively to reflect this new focus, and also ten vendor chapters (North Plains, ADAM, Extensis, Xinet, and WAVE to name a few). We'll have another release later this fall that will add mid-market vendor Picturepark and take a fresh look at the latest offerings from MediaBeacon and Autonomy.
I look forward to your questions on our research, and on the ongoing changes in the Brand & Digital Asset Management space.