• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 10, 2024

Publishers and advertisers both are being pressured to create content at a breakneck pace. A full 77% of creative teams expect their production volume to increase in the year to come, compared to 72% in prior years, according to The State of Digital Content, 2025 Edition, a study from Canto, conducted in partnership with Ascend2.

But only 25% feel they have the right tools for the job, and 17% expect budget cuts, up from 10% last year. 

Still, the job must get done, and almost all are trying to use AI to some degree. The major content priorities for 2025 are:

• Improve content quality and relevance—50%
• Build brand awareness—46%
• Improve the customer experience—42%
• Improve efficiency—37%
• Grow and optimize team resources—32%
• Create and distribute more content—32%
• Increase content ROI—31%

But there are big challenges, including:

• Keeping up with increasing content demands for various channels—45%
• Allocating adequate budget and/or resources—37%
• Managing a growing volume of content, amplified by generative AI—36%
• Finding and/or implementing the right technology—33%
• Aligning teams for effective collaboration and/or efficient workflows—31%
• Maintaining brand consistency—31%
• Inability to deliver at the speed of business—26%
• Locating and accessing assets efficiently—23%

Of those surveyed, 34% use a digital asset management (DAM) platform, which helps them in repurposing content. However, repurposing is no easy task—only 21% say it is. The challenges are:

• Adapting content for various platforms—38%
• Maintaining brand consistency—36%
• Lack of time/resources required for repurposing—36%
• Finding the right assets quickly—35%
• Measuring effectiveness of repurposed content—35%
• Tracking content usage—34%
• Effective collaboration across teams—30%
• Managing version control—29%
• Efficient scaling amount of content we repurpose—26%

Publishers, editors and brand leaders should focus on this question: How are you using AI to create, manage, and distribute content? The answers:

• Improving content quality (e.g. grammar, tone, sentiment)—40%
• Automating content creation (e.g., text, images, video)—36%
• Automating repetitive tasks (e.g., tagging, categorization, metadata generation)—31%
• Enhancing content discovery/recommendations—29%
• Improving organization with automated tagging—28%
• Personalizing content for audience segments—26%
• Analyzing content performance and insights—26%
• Optimizing content for SEO/performance—23%
• Streamlining content distribution—22%
• Not using AI for content—14%

Ascend2 surveyed 423 professionals.