Kestrel & Vane's creative lives in three Google Drives, a Dropbox and two freelancers' laptops. Finding last year's best holiday video takes a morning. After moving into a DAM, a search for holiday unboxing returns it in seconds, with its creator, product and every version beside it.

Creative teams lose hours to searching, re-shoot footage they already own, and forget which ads worked. A DAM keeps the archive usable as it grows, and it is where creative and performance data can meet: you cannot learn from your history if you cannot find it.

Bring everything in, including creative that never ran, since unused footage is raw material for new ads. Agree a naming and tagging scheme, set roles so freelancers see only what they need, and retire duplicates instead of keeping five copies of one file.