Acquia DAM Adds New Integrations to Enhance Brand Management

DAM is having a moment right now. 

And it's not just the publication of Forrester's Q1 Wave Report for Digital Asset Management Systems, which hit the streets today. That's certainly adding to the gravitas.

No, “DAM” is overflowing for a number of reasons. For starters, brands are creating an epic deluge of content. It's undeniable, but it's also perfectly logical. We live in a world that thrives on digital detritus, and modern creative tools have made it easy to produce an unthinkable number of assets at lightning speed. 

But therein lies the problem: how do you manage it all? 

Add to that the very real phenomenon of generative AI, which is rippling across the functionality landscape with terrific force. As brands automate and scale the production of the assets they're producing – driven in part by personalized variants and test iterations – marketing departments are under increasing pressure to police the streets and maintain governance.

As much as AI is part of the problem, it's also presenting itself as a solution. Such is the case with Acquia DAM (formerly Widen), which has been piloting a new bench of AI capabilities – some of which were announced at Engage Boston, which I covered in detail here. The company has been innovating on the edge with generative AI for quite some time, injecting its DAM with search and share features and a product and image description generator last year.

Today, Acquia introduced a new set of integrations for its digital asset management solution, designed to expand its brand management capabilities. The company says the integrations with Acquia Campaign Studio, Adobe Stock, and Google Translate will reduce the complexity of maintaining consistent brand experiences across digital channels – and help marketing and creative teams save time and squeeze more value from their content assets.

As Acquia knows too well, brands aren't showing any signs of slowing their content hustle. In fact, it's quite the opposite: they need to differentiate with fresh and relevant content to power their marketing campaigns and drive more clicks and purchases. That includes harnessing an ever-growing landscape of visual product imagery, graphics, and more.

I had a chance to connect with Jake Athey, Vice President, Sales and Go-to-Market, DAM and PIM at Acquia. He's the muscle behind the ever-growing mountain of digital assets, helping to evangelize Acquia's solutions through the marketer's lens. As a DAM and PIM expert, he brings a deep understanding of the evolving landscape – a journey he began during his time at Widen.

“Brand leaders today are looking to free up their teams to be more creative and to use digital content assets in new ways,” he said. “These new integrations help customers scale their use of digital content across digital channels and across regions to deliver a better brand experience in less time.”

Beef up marketing automation with Acquia Campaign Studio

First and foremost, Acquia DAM is now integrated with Acquia Campaign Studio – the company’s full-scale marketing automation solution. The integration leverages Acquia’s instant search connector tool, so once a user is authenticated in the DAM connector within Campaign Studio, they can search, view, and select the asset of their choice within Campaign Studio’s email and landing page builders. 

Here's something really cool: by tapping this connection, any pictures in emails or landing page builders dynamically change when they're updated in Acquia DAM. This has a potentially huge benefit for marketing teams as it will not only save time but also reduce the chance of using off-brand or unapproved content. 

As you might imagine, this is super valuable for brands that have hundreds – or even thousands – of assets in various places to support decentralized users and brands (think franchises or distributors).

Access images with ease via Adobe Stock  

The Adobe Stock integration offers what you might expect from a CMS or DXP stock image connector, reducing the friction of accessing images, video, or other digital assets in one place while piping in essential metadata. But Acquia DAM goes beyond the typical by providing a more enhanced UX with smoother workflows. Creative pros can choose which types of Adobe Stock assets to monitor and sync, and the integration handles file copying and categorization in Acquia DAM. 

“Our new Adobe Stock integration simplifies the creative workflow for our customers significantly by automating the syncing of newly licensed assets from Adobe Stock directly into Acquia DAM,” Jake said. “This means that as soon as a customer licenses a new asset on Adobe Stock, it’s automatically uploaded to DAM, along with important metadata like the asset’s ID, title, and keywords. Users can tailor this integration to their needs by choosing which types of assets they want to sync, such as photos, illustrations, and videos.”

Jake also explained that the setup uses OAuth Server-to-Server credentials. Customers need only provide their Client ID and Client Secret specific to their Adobe Stock account to enable a secure connection. But once established, the rest should be cream cheese. 

It's worth noting that Acquia DAM also provides long-standing integrations with Getty Images and Shutterstock, both of which offer well-documented API recipes for integrations. The real magic is how a platform harnesses these capabilities and surfaces the value. 

“The Adobe Stock integration follows a similar automated approach to syncing assets,” Jake said. “Since this is a managed integration, there will be no need for a new user interface – everything is syncing in the background to make things easy for users.”

Interpret more accessibility with Google Translate

Language translation and localization is finally becoming table stakes for globally-aware brands (although it's a mystery why it's still missing on so many sites). Still, software UX is often overlooked. Acquia aims to mitigate that by adding Google Translate to its DAM, helping to ensure that branded content is accessible, searchable, and relevant to diverse users and groups. 

It's simple: customers can use Google Translate to automatically translate text from selected metadata fields. The DAM automatically repopulates these fields with translated content in up to 20 languages. 

For those of us who have integrated Google Translate at the web layer, we know there's been a palpable lack of control and customizability. I asked Jake how Acquia is enabling DAM users to “massage” translated content if the text requires any additional tweaks after a human review. There are certainly other tools that facilitate this, and it's a place where AI is also making a dent in the obstacles. 

“With Acquia’s flexible permissions and dynamic path notifications, customers can set up their desired governance and workflow processes, so they have an opportunity to check translations,” he said. “As with the use of generative AI, we believe incorporating human review into a translation workflow is a best practice. We also have an OpenAI Translate Native Integration on our product roadmap.”

Building on a legacy of AI innovation

As previously noted, AI has long been a part of the Acquia roadmap. Last May, when I spoke to Deanna Ballew, SVP of Product at Acquia, she shared a bit about where the company's AI investment had started – and how the open source Drupal community was already innovating around ChatGPT connectors at the CMS level. 

I asked Jake about the recent AI announcements from Engage last November, and what we might expect on the horizon. He gave me a bit of what's in the rearview mirror, and a peek through the windshield. He started with Acquia DAM’s Workflow AI Assistant, which was launched in 2023, and supports the ability to more efficiently generate new creative and copy ideas and editing suggestions to streamline work-in-process cycles. It also helps to keep teams on brand, accelerating time to market with new brand assets.

This was followed by the aforementioned AI-powered keywords and automated description, caption, and alt-text generation – which supports the ability to catalog, find, and use new assets more quickly. Automated alt-text generation also supports SEO and accessibility to optimize brand asset performance across digital channels.

“Acquia DAM’s new search by color and color filters help users to quickly find and use available assets based on design color scheme and brand colors,” he shared. “The new integration with Adobe Stock and our existing integration with Shutterstock also tap into the generative AI capabilities of those platforms.”

So what's next? Some pretty sophisticated stuff.

“New AI capabilities to come include advancements to smart tags, facial recognition, focal point cropping, video transcription, and AI-based GPT video generation and editing,” Jake said. “With all of these and more, our intention is to enable marketers and creative pros to accelerate content velocity, while staying true to brand standards and supporting richer digital experiences for their own customers.”

What's ahead in 2024 for Acquia DAM?

As Jake pointed out, Acquia DAM supports a wide range of organizations across sizes and industries. Acquia proper continues to support Fortune 1000 organizations, including a majority who have – or are replacing – a DAM. 

“With these innovations, Acquia is also focused heavily on serving the late-stage majority of first-time DAM buyers in the middle market, with an estimated 200,000 companies in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan,” he confirmed. “Acquia is focused on brands and agencies alike, and serves marketing communications, creative/design, digital/web, product, and e-commerce functions.”

In terms of target industries, the company is focusing on manufacturing and engineering, supply chain and logistics, financial services, food and beverage (including manufacturers, distributors, grocery stores, and restaurants), consumer goods, healthcare, education, and more. Obviously, this list can become more granular, but it provides a high-level snapshot of where they see opportunities for DAM to make a difference.

As I previously discussed with Deanna Ballew, the theme of composability remains key to Acquia (and just about every platform in the industry). As a legacy DXP with a more traditionally monolithic posture, Acquia has been making strides to decouple its products in the right places, so customers can leverage the efficiencies of a composed DXP while purchasing a specific product within the portfolio. To that end, it's worth reinforcing that Acquia DAM may be used as a standalone solution or with content management systems such as Drupal or other products in the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (Acquia DXP).

You can learn more about Acquia DAM’s native AI features and the new set of DAM integrations on its website.

Upcoming conferences

CMS Connect 24

August 6-7, 2024 – Montreal, Canada

We are delighted to present our first annual summer edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to the global content management community. Join us this August in Montreal, Canada, for a vendor-neutral conference focused on CMS. Tired of impersonal and overwhelming gatherings? Picture this event as a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities.

CMS Kickoff 25

January 14-15, 2025 – Tampa Bay Area, Florida

Join us next January in the Tampa Bay area of Florida for the third annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, so secure your tickets today.