• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 28, 2023

Marketers are gearing up to deliver a range of content in the near future, judging by The State of Digital Content 2024 Edition, a study from Canto, conducted by Ascend2. 

But they face serious challenges: 

• Keeping up with increasing content demands for various channels — 51% 
• Allocating adequate budget and/or resources — 43% 
• Aligning teams for effective collaboration and/or efficient workflows — 42%
• Locating and accessing assets efficiently — 33% 
• Maintaining brand consistency — 32% 
• Finding and/or implementing the right technology — 31% 
• Inability to deliver at the speed of business — 26%

Marketers have set the following priorities for 2024:

• Improve the customer experience — 56% 
• Build brand awareness — 54%
• Improve efficiency and collaboration — 51%
• Grow and optimize team resources — 40% 
• Increase content ROI — 38% 
• Create and distribute more content — 35%

Are brands using AI technology to create content? Of those polled, 23% are not doing so and have no plans to in the coming year. But 42% are planning to use AI and 35% are now using AI.

However, AI presents its own dangers, including:

Potential quality issues or plagiarism — 65% 

Requires human prompts/review/vetting — 50% 

Too much content is created, which is hard to organize and manage — 30%

Lack of creativity and personalization — 30%

How do they measure success? They use these metrics:

Audience engagement — 56%

KPIs like website traffic, conversion rates, lead generation, and/or sales revenue — 55%

Quality and relevance of the content for your target audience — 55%

Costs to produce and distribute the content — 47%

Brand awareness — 47%

Looking forward, marketers see the role of AI evolving as follows over the next two years: 

• AI will become essential for efficient content management — 32%
• AI will play a role, but human oversight will remain critical — 54%
• AI’s impact on content management will be limited — 6%
• Unsure/No Opinion — 8%

Ascend2 surveyed 375 professionals who self-identified as being involved in the production, management, distribution, and/or strategy for content and creative assets at their organization.

The survey -- 65% of which took place in the U.S. and the remainder in the U.K. -- was conducted in October 2023.