By Robert Daynes, managing director, digital asset management, Cloudinary
In today’s volatile retail landscape, managing digital assets efficiently is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. A closer look at the data from the video and image transactions Cloudinary processed during Cyber Week 2024 highlights why this is so.
To provide some context: Cloudinary is an image and video management platform that supports more than two million users and 10,000 customers, including international retail and e-commerce brands like Dune London, Neiman Marcus, Minted, Paul Smith, Wren Kitchens, Rapha, and River Island.
During Black Friday 2024, Cloudinary delivered 28.6 billion image views, serving 330,000 images per second. We also observed a 32% increase in video usage compared to the previous year. These epic-scale figures underscore the critical role high-quality visuals play in today’s e-commerce environment.
However, Cyber Week isn’t an isolated phenomenon anymore. Retailers increasingly launch major campaigns throughout the year. For instance, one of our clients, a global sporting goods brand, navigates around 900 significant commercial events annually.
As the demand for managing, accessing, and publishing visual content—such as images and videos—grows, retailers are operating at an unprecedented scale. This puts immense pressure on their IT infrastructure and systems. Without leveraging automation and AI, it’s nearly impossible to manage this scale efficiently or to deliver engaging, seamless visual experiences sustainably.
That’s where modern Digital Asset Management (DAM) comes in. Traditionally, DAMs have been used primarily to store and manage content such as documents and images. However, today’s advanced solutions support a much broader range of assets, from images to audio to video, and manage them throughout their lifecycle and at scale. A modern DAM goes far beyond simple storage – it enables retailers to maintain full control over the content they publish, whether it’s created in-house or user-generated. With features such as moderation tools, automatic cropping, subtitling and automatic video translation, these systems streamline workflows, reduce time-to-market and maximise ROI by enabling assets to be easily repurposed across regions and campaigns.
Let’s dig into some of the key capabilities that modern DAMs offer retailers.
Simplify post-production
Once the images and videos for a retail campaign are shot, the web team often faces challenges in adapting the visual content for various devices and channels. In fact, post-production work such as cropping, resizing, and encoding images and videos to fit different formats is frequently considered more difficult and time-consuming than the creation of the assets in the first place. Without automation, these tasks can slow down page loads and harm the user experience – especially during big commercial events like Black Friday. By using AI-driven automation within a modern DAM system, retailers can streamline these processes, ensure faster delivery, and improve site performance.
Mobile-first is no longer optional
Our Black Friday report also revealed that more than 300 TB of images and videos were delivered to mobile devices alone. This highlights the critical role mobile plays in the buying journey and clearly indicates that mobile optimisation and a mobile-first shopping experience are no longer optional—they’re essential. Optimising mobile websites or apps requires more than just resizing for smaller screens; it means considering network conditions, device types, and delivering an intentional, seamless experience. With a modern DAM, optimisation for mobile is simple and ensures your growing number of mobile customers stay satisfied.
Unlock the power of video
Old legacy DAMs often fall short when it comes to managing videos —a critical gap in today’s visually driven, video-first marketing landscape. This challenge is underscored by our recent Global Video Survey, spanning 15 countries, which highlights how brands are leveraging video to build trust (78%), enhance awareness (65%), and drive purchases (54%). Notably, 37% of consumers rely on user-generated videos for purchase decisions, while branded videos influence over a quarter of buyers. For retailers, this trend signals a transformational opportunity: investing in a next-generation DAM that seamlessly handles diverse media types, scales effortlessly, and incorporates automation to optimise video content.
Another capability of modern DAMs comes in handy here too: automating the summary and trimming of 3-4 minute videos into 3-30 second clips for TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. With AI-driven automation capabilities of modern DAMs, retailers can easily transform their long-form content into engaging short-form videos using defined poses and movements.
Mastering UGC control & moderation
User-generated content (UGC) is no longer just a nice-to-have. From unboxing videos to customer reviews, UGC showcases authenticity and builds trust, especially with younger audiences who value real, relatable experiences. No question, UGC drives results: 69% of companies embrace UGC videos, citing audience engagement (79%), authentic user experiences (63%), and SEO benefits (44%) as key reasons. Retailers that harness UGC can boost customer loyalty and drive foot traffic—both online and in-store.
However, not all is gold when it comes to UGC. Concerns about brand alignment (56%), legal issues (51%), and inappropriate content (41%) hold some brands back. AI-powered DAM solutions let you automate UGC moderation with workflows that are both efficient and reliable. Imagine the power of AI detecting competitor logos in seconds, filtering out inappropriate language in video audio, or flagging content that doesn’t align with your brand’s tone. With these capabilities, retailers can embrace UGC confidently, creating engaging, authentic, and safe experiences for customers.
Prevent asset loss
By using AI, modern DAMs offer the capabilities to analyse and auto-tag vast volumes of images and videos, making it effortless for the marketing team to locate and use the right assets—saving not only time and frustration but also money.
Imagine this: Without a centralised DAM, global retailers are known to lose entire collections of valuable images or videos, forcing costly reshoots. Why? Assets are scattered across hard drives, personal devices, or even forgotten when employees leave without documenting key files. Modern DAMs solve this problem by acting as the ‘single source of truth’ for storing, managing, and safeguarding your visual content—no more misplaced files or preventable headaches.
Future-proof your retail operations
Modern DAMs don’t just address today’s challenges—they equip you to thrive in the future. In e-commerce, visuals are the backbone of success, a fact underscored by high-traffic events like Black Friday. Shoppers demand fast, immersive, and seamless experiences, leaving no room for compromise. As we approach 2025, brands must prioritise visual-first strategies to outpace the competition.
If your visuals fail to captivate, your audience won’t engage. But with the right tools, you can effortlessly create and deliver stunning, personalised content across every channel—setting the stage for scalable, long-term growth.
