Digital Asset

In finance and law, "digital asset" has a second meaning: cryptocurrencies, tokens and other holdings recorded on a blockchain. This entry uses the marketing and content meaning.

Examples of digital assets

Kind	Examples in a B2B marketing team
Images	Product photos, packshots, lifestyle photos, team portraits, event photos
Brand files	Logos, icons, colour palettes, typefaces, brand guidelines
Video and audio	Product demos, customer interviews, webinar recordings, podcasts, social clips
Documents	Datasheets, case studies, price lists, white papers, brochures
Presentations	Sales decks, partner training decks, event slides
Design and source files	Layered design files, print-ready artwork, packaging artwork, templates
3D and technical files	3D product models, CAD exports, technical drawings

Not every file needs to be managed as an asset. A draft that will be thrown away, a personal screenshot or a duplicate export usually does not. A useful test: will more than one person need the file, and do rules such as versions, licences, approval or expiry apply to it? If both answers are yes, it is an asset.

What makes a file an asset

The file is one part. The record around it holds the rest:

• Descriptive metadata: title, product, campaign and keywords, so the asset can be found.
• Rights: the licence, model releases, expiry date, and the regions and channels where it may be used. See usage rights.
• Status: draft, in review, approved or archived.
• Version history: which file is current and which files it replaced. See version control.
• Renditions: previews and derived formats for web, print and social media. See rendition.
• Relationships: the collections and campaigns it belongs to, and linked assets such as the colour variants of a product shot.
• A permanent identifier that stays the same when the file is renamed, moved or replaced.

Why the distinction matters

Copying files into a shared drive keeps the bytes and loses the context. The photographer's name stays in an email, the licence terms in a contract folder, the "final" status in someone's head. A sales representative then downloads a photo whose licence has ended, or a partner prints last year's datasheet.

Treating files as assets means recording that context once, when the file enters the library, and keeping it with the file wherever it is used: in a share link, a brand portal or a template. The guide to cloud storage limitations describes where shared drives fall short for this.

Digital assets in Freedam

• Each asset is one record with a permanent ID, its file, its metadata, its workflow status, its collections and its linked assets, in the asset library.
• Uploading a new version replaces the file on the same record, so metadata, collections and links stay in place. Earlier versions stay in the history and can be downloaded or restored. See version control.
• Previews are generated for images, video, audio, PDFs, Office documents, EPS files, design files and archives, so an asset can be viewed without opening the original. See rendition.
• Asset classes give each kind of asset (product photo, video, document) its own fields, form layout and workflow.
• Assets are linked by hand, or automatically when they share a value in a linking field, such as the same product number.
• Rights policies with expiry dates are assigned to assets, and access rules decide who may view or download them.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a digital asset and a file?

A file is the content alone. A digital asset is the file plus its metadata, rights, status and history, managed so that other people can find it and use it correctly.

Is cryptocurrency a digital asset?

In finance, yes: "digital asset" is used there for cryptocurrencies, tokens and other blockchain-based holdings. In marketing and content management, the term means files such as images, videos and documents. The two meanings are unrelated.

What is digital asset management?

Digital asset management (DAM) is the practice, and the software, for storing, describing, finding, sharing and governing digital assets in one place. The guide What is digital asset management explains it in full.