Glossary

Brand and digital asset management terms, defined in plain language.

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Access Control: Access control decides who can see, preview, download, edit or share each asset. How roles, groups and asset-level rules work in a DAM, with examples.
Audit Trail: An audit trail is a chronological record of who did what, to which asset, and when. What a DAM should log, what makes a log reliable, and how it is used.
Automatic Tagging: Automatic tagging (auto-tagging) uses AI to add descriptive tags to images when they are uploaded: how it works, where it goes wrong, and how a DAM should handle it.

Brand Assets: Brand assets are the elements that identify a brand (logo, colours, typefaces, imagery, tagline) and the files that carry them. Examples, and how to manage them.
Brand Guidelines: Brand guidelines, also called a brand guide or style guide, are the rules for how a brand looks and sounds: logo use, colours, typography, imagery and tone.
Brand Imagery: Brand imagery is the photos, illustrations, icons and video a brand uses to show itself: what it includes, how to define a photography style, and the rights needed.
Brand Management: Brand management is the ongoing work of defining a brand, keeping all material consistent with it, and measuring how people see it. What the work involves daily.
Brand Portal: A brand portal is a self-service site where partners, agencies and press download approved brand assets: what it holds, who uses it, how access is controlled.

Content Credentials (C2PA): Content Credentials are signed C2PA records attached to an image, video or audio file that list how it was made and edited, so a verifier can check them later.
Controlled Vocabulary: A controlled vocabulary is an agreed list of terms used to tag assets, so everyone describes the same thing with the same word. Types, examples and upkeep.

Digital Asset: A digital asset is a file with value to an organisation, plus the metadata and rights that make it reusable. Examples, types, and how a DAM system manages them.
Digital Rights Management (DRM): Digital rights management (DRM) controls how digital content may be used. Copy protection versus rights management in a DAM, ODRL policies, and enforcement.
Duplicate Detection: Duplicate detection finds identical and near-identical files in a library: checksums, perceptual hashing, why duplicates cause problems and how to resolve them.

Embargo: An embargo keeps content from being published or used before a set date and time. Press embargoes, launch embargoes on marketing assets, and how to run one.

Face Recognition Search: Face recognition search finds every photo of one person in a media library without manual tags: how it works, what teams use it for, and the GDPR rules.

Ingestion: Ingestion is the process of bringing files into a DAM by upload, import or API, then scanning them, reading their metadata, checking duplicates and making previews.

Marketing Collateral: Marketing collateral is the material that supports sales: brochures, one-pagers, case studies, decks, banners. Examples by type, and how to keep every copy current.
Metadata: Metadata is structured information about a file: what it shows, who made it, its format and how it may be used. The types, standards and examples in a DAM.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition): OCR (optical character recognition) turns text inside images and scans into machine-readable text: how it works, how accurate it is, and what it changes in a DAM.

Rebranding: Rebranding means changing how a company or product presents itself: name, logo, colours or positioning. The types of rebrand, and how to replace every old asset.
Rendition: A rendition is a copy of an asset generated from the original for one use: a thumbnail, a web image, a video stream or a document preview. Common types and uses.

Semantic Search: Semantic search finds assets by the meaning of a query, not its exact words: how embeddings work, how it compares with keyword search, and when to use each.

Taxonomy: A taxonomy is a hierarchy of categories, from broad to narrow, used to classify content consistently. Examples, taxonomy vs folders and tags, and how to build one.

Usage Rights: Usage rights define where, how, for how long and by whom an asset may be used. What a licence covers, which releases you need, and how to track expiry dates.

Version Control: Version control keeps every revision of a file under one asset with its history, so teams always use the current file and can restore an earlier one when needed.
Visual Search: Visual search finds images by what they look like, using an example image as the query instead of words: how it works, what it finds and how teams use it.

Watermarking: Watermarking adds a mark to an image or video to show its owner, recipient or status. Visible and invisible watermarks, when to use each, how a DAM applies them.