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Threat actors are stealing sensitive data from organizations by breaching end-of-life appliances made by cybersecurity company SonicWall. 
Incident responders from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant said on Wednesday that they have uncovered an ongoing campaign by an unidentified threat group that leverages credentials and one-time password (OTP) seeds stolen during previous intrusions — allowing the hackers to regain access to organizations even after security updates are installed. 
A Google spokesperson said the company does not have enough data to determine where the threat actors are based, what their motives are or how many total victims there are. The researchers refer to the group as UNC6148 in the report on the campaign, which they said dates back to October 2024. 
Google said the actors may be financially motivated because at least one organization targeted in May was eventually posted on the "World Leaks" data-leak site in June and other past activity surfaced links to the Abyss ransomware gang. But the researchers warned that they “cannot rule out coincidental overlap at this time.”
The campaign is targeting fully patched end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances. Google explained that the malware the hackers are using removes log entries, making it difficult to figure out how they initially gained access to a system. 
SonicWall did not respond to Record Future News’ request for comment, but Google said it worked with the company’s Product Security Incident Response Team to investigate several incidents. 
Google said the campaign extends beyond the incidents they investigated directly and added that SonicWall has “confirmed reports of other impacted organizations.” The company noted that SonicWall updated an advisory for a bug tracked as CVE-2024-38475 in light of Google’s findings. 
"As an added security measure, we strongly advise customers to reset the OTP (One-Time Password) binding for all users. This step ensures that any potentially compromised or stale OTP secrets are invalidated, thereby mitigating unauthorized access risks,” SonicWall said in the update to the advisory.. 
One novel aspect of the campaign is the use of a backdoor called OVERSTEP, which modifies the SonicWall appliance’s boot process to maintain persistent access, steal sensitive credentials and conceal the malware’s own components.
Incident responders struggled to track other activities by the hackers because OVERSTEP allowed them to delete logs and largely cover their tracks. 
OVERSTEP is specifically designed for SonicWall SMA 100 series appliances, according to Google.
In addition to CVE-2024-38475, Google and Mandiant experts floated several potential vulnerabilities the hackers may have used to gain initial access, including CVE-2021-20038, CVE-2024-38475, CVE-2021-20035, CVE-2021-20039 and, CVE-2025-32819. 
Beyond those, Google theorized that the hackers may have used an unknown zero-day vulnerability to deploy the malware on targeted SonicWall SMA appliances.
“Mandiant's first observations of UNC6148 in a recent investigation showed that they already had local administrator credentials to the targeted SMA 100 series appliance, and no forensic evidence nor other data was identified to show how those credentials were obtained,” the report said. 
“GTIG assesses with high confidence that UNC6148 exploited a known vulnerability to steal administrator credentials prior to the targeted SMA appliance being updated to the latest firmware version, based on the patching timeline and public reporting of SonicWall n-day exploitation activity throughout 2025.” 
The hackers subsequently took steps to make sure they would have “privileged and persistence control of the appliance” through OVERSTEP. 
“While we did not directly observe the weaponization of this stolen data, it creates a clear path for persistent access,” the researchers said. 
Jonathan Greig
is a Breaking News Reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014. Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
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23 Feb 2025
23 Feb 2025
Principal Research Consultant – Turkey
The integration of AI into the entertainment industry is revolutionizing content creation, personalization, and audience engagement. From AI-generated music and gaming to hyper-realistic visual effects, the technology is reshaping how audiences interact with media. While global investments in AI infrastructure fuel innovation, ethical concerns surrounding data privacy, intellectual property, and regulatory compliance continue to grow. Emerging technologies, such as brainwave analysis and biometric tracking used in gaming, virtual reality, and interactive media, introduce new ethical challenges related to cognitive privacy and data security. As AI systems process vast amounts of user and proprietary data, industries must navigate a complex landscape of regulatory frameworks and emerging challenges.
The entertainment sector sits at the intersection of creativity and technology, where innovation must be balanced with responsible data use and legal safeguards. While tech companies race to capture consumer demand and governments increase local investments in AI-driven infrastructure, debates around content ownership, algorithmic transparency, and digital rights protection continue to intensify. This insight explores the transformative potential of AI in entertainment, examines evolving legal and regulatory frameworks for data protection, explores emerging data protection challenges, and discusses strategies to foster innovation while maintaining ethical and regulatory compliance in an increasingly AI-powered world.
The Role of AI in Entertainment
From automating creative processes to enhancing audience engagement, AI is revolutionizing entertainment by transforming how content is created, personalized, and experienced. Streaming services and content platforms rely on AI to enhance user experience through personalized recommendations. Beyond content suggestions, AI also powers interactive audience engagement strategies. Chatbots, virtual influencers, and AI-driven social media campaigns allow brands and entertainment companies to create more dynamic interactions with their audiences. As more AI-powered streaming services expand, cloud computing and AI model training require vast amounts of energy, especially for services like Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+.
The gaming industry is also experiencing a revolution driven by AI advancements. Machine Learning (ML) and neural networks enable adaptive gameplay experiences, where AI analyzes player behavior and adjusts game difficulty, scenarios, or even storylines in real time to create more immersive and unpredictable environments. Non-player characters (NPCs) are becoming increasingly intelligent, thanks to AI, and NPCs now react dynamically to player actions, adapting their behavior and dialogue accordingly.
Creative content is experiencing one of the most profound shifts due to AI, as platforms and tools now enable users to generate lyrics, audio, and scripts with just a simple prompt. From automated songwriting assistants to AI-powered voice synthesis and script generators, technology is reshaping how content is created, customized, and distributed. Large media companies are increasingly integrating AI-driven virtual production techniques, visual effects, and CGI, revolutionizing content creation. AI enhances real-time rendering, automates complex visual tasks, and generates hyper-realistic environments, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and immersive digital experiences.
In 2024, AI accounted for 44% of US VC-backed investments, up from 25% in 2023.[1] Despite this rapid growth, AI’s overall penetration across industries remains relatively low compared to the banking sector, where adoption is most widespread. However, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 26%, AI-driven use cases are expected to see significant expansion by 2030.[2]
Global Investments in AI Infrastructure
The rapid advancement of AI and large language models (LLMs) requires a strong technological backbone, prompting governments and corporations worldwide to invest heavily in AI infrastructure. U.S. President Donald Trump announced in January a US$500 billion investment to fund infrastructure for AI that will support a joint venture among Open AI, Oracle and SoftBank to continue creating more jobs in the U.S. and building data centers in Texas and in other places.[3] Saudi Arabia is accelerating its AI ambitions through significant investments and strategic partnerships. In February 2025, the Kingdom committed US$1.5 billion to U.S.-based AI chipmaker Groq, designing chips specifically to run LLMs.[4] France is emerging as a significant player in the AI landscape, attracting substantial investments to bolster its infrastructure. In February 2025, Canadian investment firm Brookfield Asset Management announced a €20 billion commitment to develop AI infrastructure in France by 2030.[5] This investment includes constructing a massive data center in Cambrai.
Recognizing the growing demand for AI and cloud services, Microsoft announced in January 2025 a US$3 billion investment to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in India over the next two years. In February 2025, the European Union (EU) unveiled the “InvestAI initiative,” channeling €200 billion into AI investments.[6] The initiative focuses on constructing gigafactories necessary for training complex AI models within the EU. In September 2024, MGX, BlackRock, and Microsoft announced the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP), a US$30 billion fund dedicated to constructing data centers and energy infrastructure to enhance AI supply chains, with the potential to mobilize up to US$100 billion in total investments.[7] In February 2025, the UAE and France unveiled plans to invest between €30 billion and €50 billion to establish Europe’s largest AI data center in France.[8] These investments reflect a global race to establish robust AI ecosystems, ensuring that cutting-edge technologies can be developed, scaled, and deployed within a well-supported infrastructure. As AI continues to evolve, these strategic efforts will play a crucial role in shaping the future of AI worldwide.
Over the past year, the entertainment industry has witnessed significant advancements driven by AI innovation. A noteworthy investment in this space is Promise, a studio backed by Andreessen Horowitz, which is dedicated to producing films and series using generative AI tools. The studio is developing proprietary production software that is set to revolutionize filmmaking and storytelling by integrating AI-driven processes at every stage of production. Additionally, Autodesk, a leader in 3D design and engineering software, strengthened its position in AI-powered content creation by acquiring Wonder Dynamics. This company specializes in AI-based visual effects (VFX) and computer graphics, including character animation and compositing, enabling more efficient production workflows while reducing costs. These advancements highlight how AI is reshaping the entertainment industry, enhancing creativity while optimizing efficiency.
Data Protection Challenges in AI-Driven Entertainment
The rise of AI in entertainment has led to an unprecedented reliance on vast amounts of personal, behavioral, and proprietary data, raising concerns about privacy, security, and ownership. AI-driven tools used for content creation, audience engagement, and recommendation algorithms often process sensitive user data, making them susceptible to misuse, unauthorized access, and legal ambiguity.
One of the primary concerns is the collection and use of personal data by streaming platforms, social media, and interactive entertainment services. AI models continuously analyze user behavior to refine recommendations, personalize experiences, and even generate tailored content. However, the lack of transparency in data collection and processing raises privacy concerns, particularly as AI algorithms operate on massive datasets, often without explicit user consent. Regulatory bodies, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have introduced strict compliance requirements, but AI’s rapid evolution often outpaces enforcement efforts.
Another significant issue is intellectual property (IP) rights and AI-generated content. AI models trained on vast amounts of copyrighted material, including film scripts, music, and digital art, often lack clear attribution mechanisms. Lawsuits like the Suno and Udio cases, where major record labels including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group sued AI music generators for training on copyrighted songs without permission, highlight the legal uncertainty surrounding AI’s use of proprietary data. The suits allege that these companies used copyrighted music without authorization to train their AI models, enabling the generation of new songs based on user prompts. Similarly, AI-generated screenplays and animations, many trained on existing works, raise questions about ownership, fair use, and licensing agreements.
Deepfake technology and synthetic media also introduce serious data protection risks, as well. AI-generated replicas of actors, musicians, and public figures, sometimes used without consent, have led to high-profile legal battles. In response, laws like Tennessee’s ELVIS Act have been enacted to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated likenesses, ensuring that actors and artists retain control over their digital identities. However, challenges persist in enforcement, as AI-generated deepfakes can be difficult to trace and regulate, especially when content spreads rapidly online.
Even further, the integration of AI in the entertainment industry is increasingly utilizing advanced technologies to analyze human emotions and reactions. This involves collecting data from brainwaves and other physiological signals through wearable devices, raising significant data protection and privacy concerns. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has developed non-invasive brain-to-text technology capable of decoding unspoken sentences from brain signals using magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners. While this technology aims to assist individuals with neurological impairments, it also raises ethical concerns regarding cognitive privacy and the potential misuse of brain data. Neurable, a Boston-based company, has introduced the MW75 Neuro, a pair of smart headphones equipped with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that monitor brain activity to assess focus levels. Emotiv offers wearable EEG devices designed to monitor brain activity for applications ranging from mental wellness to virtual reality experiences.
Additionally, the storage and security of AI training data pose cybersecurity threats. Large datasets used to train AI in film, gaming, and virtual production are often highly valuable and susceptible to breaches. In cases where AI systems rely on user-generated data for ML improvements, improper handling can lead to identity theft, financial fraud, and unauthorized surveillance.
As AI-generated media becomes mainstream, the industry faces growing pressure to develop standardized frameworks for data protection, privacy compliance, and ethical AI use. Collaboration between regulators, technology companies, and creative professionals will be essential to strike a balance between innovation and protecting personal and proprietary data in the evolving entertainment landscape.
Regulatory and Ethical Frameworks
The increasing use of AI in entertainment has prompted global efforts to establish regulatory and ethical frameworks that balance innovation with the protection of intellectual property (IP), personal data, and digital identities. Governments and industry leaders are working to address concerns surrounding AI-generated content, deepfake technology, and automated media production, ensuring that creators and performers maintain control over their work.
One of the most pressing issues is the unauthorized use of performers’ likenesses and voices. In 2024, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) secured a groundbreaking agreement with major record labels, including Warner Music Group and Sony Music, ensuring that artists must provide consent and receive compensation before AI-generated replicas of their voices can be commercially released.
In March 2024, Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act to protect individuals, especially in entertainment, from unauthorized AI-generated replicas of their voice and image.[9] The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), adopted by the European Parliament in March 2024, classifies AI applications based on risk levels—unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. For instance, the Colorado Senate unanimously passed legislation to establish privacy rights for human brainwaves, marking a pioneering step in neurodata protection.
In the Asia-Pacific region, approaches to AI regulation and data protection vary. Singapore, for instance, has adopted a “light touch” regulatory stance, issuing advisory guidelines that emphasize principles like transparency, fairness, and human centricity. China’s Cybersecurity Administration (CAC) and six other agencies issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative AI Services, effective 15 August 2023, to regulate generative AI for public use. The UK is considering the introduction of a “right of personality” law, which would grant individuals control over the commercial use of their image and voice.
While these regulatory steps are taken, major technology companies have expressed apprehension regarding stringent AI regulations, particularly in the EU. Executives from firms like Meta and Spotify have argued that complex and fragmented regulatory environments could stifle AI innovation and competitiveness. They advocate for harmonized and clear policies to foster AI development while ensuring data protection and ethical standards are upheld. As AI continues to permeate the entertainment industry globally, regions are adopting diverse regulatory approaches to balance innovation with the protection of data and intellectual property rights. Ongoing dialogue among stakeholders—including governments, industry leaders, and creative professionals—is essential to develop frameworks that address the unique challenges posed by AI in entertainment.
Strategies for Balancing Innovation and Protection
As AI continues to reshape entertainment, industry leaders, regulators, and creators must adopt strategies that foster technological innovation while ensuring ethical safeguards and intellectual property (IP) protection as stated above. Achieving this balance requires a combination of legal frameworks, responsible AI development, consumer education, energy-efficient AI deployment, and collaborative industry initiatives. For instance, Google’s Gboard uses federated learning to improve predictive text functionalities without transmitting user typing data to central servers. Clearly identifiable marks, such as logos or text overlays, can be added to content. For example, OpenAI’s DALL·E 2 initially included a visible watermark. Google’s DeepMind developed SynthID, an invisible watermarking system that integrates into AI-generated images’ pixels without altering their appearance, allowing for reliable detection of AI-generated content. Adobe’s Content Credentials system, for instance, attaches metadata to images created or edited with AI tools, detailing the content’s origin and any modifications.
Additionally, clear copyright policies and licensing models must be established to ensure that AI-generated works do not infringe on existing creative assets. Platforms like YouTube and Spotify are exploring AI attribution tools that enable artists to track and claim royalties for AI-generated content trained on their work.
Another essential strategy is collaboration between entertainment companies, AI developers, and regulatory bodies. Industry-wide agreements, like the 2024 SAG-AFTRA contract for AI-generated voices, set important precedents for ethical AI use in media production. Similarly, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) continues to advocate for legal protections that prevent AI from replacing human writers without proper compensation. These efforts highlight the importance of establishing clear guidelines that protect creative professionals while allowing AI-assisted content generation to thrive.
Beyond legal and industry efforts, education and consumer empowerment are critical to balancing innovation and protection. AI-powered tools are making storytelling, advertising, and digital content creation accessible to everyday users, shifting content production from professionals to a wider public audience. Large companies and governments can play a crucial role by educating consumers on ethical AI use, digital rights, and responsible content distribution. This includes raising awareness about the ethical boundaries of sharing and distributing AI-generated media before, during, and after the creation process. By integrating AI literacy programs into schools, digital platforms, and public policies, consumers can be equipped with the knowledge to create responsibly, avoid misinformation, and respect intellectual property rights. Additionally, companies like Splice are actively working with educators and developing platforms that support the next generation of artists. Splice provides a library of royalty-free samples, AI-assisted music creation tools, and educational resources that empower emerging musicians to explore AI-driven creativity while maintaining ownership of their work.
On the consumer side, while AI-driven content recommendations and personalized streaming experiences increase load at data centers, AI is also reducing energy consumption at home through smarter content delivery and device optimization. AI-enhanced streaming services optimize video compression through codecs like AV1 and VVC, reducing bandwidth without sacrificing quality. This results in lower power usage on smart TVs and streaming devices. AI is also improving content delivery networks (CDNs) by ensuring content is streamed from the closest available server, reducing redundant data transmissions and minimizing energy usage.
Finally, investing in ethical AI research and workforce adaptation is essential to ensure that creative professionals can leverage AI as a tool rather than compete against it. Training programs, industry workshops, and AI-assisted creative platforms can help integrate AI into traditional entertainment workflows while maintaining human oversight and artistic integrity.
Conclusion
AI is undeniably transforming the entertainment industry, offering groundbreaking advancements in content creation, audience engagement, and personalization. From AI-generated music and adaptive gaming experiences to hyper-realistic visual effects and personalized streaming, AI is driving a new era of creative possibilities. However, as AI continues to evolve, it also raises critical concerns about data privacy, intellectual property rights, and ethical AI governance, requiring a delicate balance between innovation and protection. Additionally, the rise of neurodata collection in entertainment introduces a new frontier of data privacy challenges. Companies are now leveraging brainwave analysis and biometric data to enhance gaming, virtual reality, and personalized content experiences.
Global investments in AI infrastructure are fueling the rapid adoption of these technologies, with major economies like the U.S., Saudi Arabia, France, the UAE, and India making substantial financial commitments to support AI development. Yet, with this progress comes the growing need for robust data protection measures and regulatory frameworks. The enactment of the ELVIS Act and global regulations like the EU AI Act and China’s generative AI measures underscore the urgency of addressing copyright disputes, AI-generated deepfakes, and data security concerns and even further collecting human data such as brainwaves. With the right balance of regulation, innovation, and collaboration, AI can continue to enhance creativity and efficiency in entertainment, ensuring that technological advancements serve both artists and audiences in an equitable and sustainable manner.
[1] “AI Funding Kicks into Overdrive in Q4,” EY, 2025, https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/growth/venture-capital-investment-trends.
[2] “Top Companies Leveraging AI in the Entertainment Industry,” Aim Research, 2024, https://aimresearch.co/market-industry/top-companies-leveraging-ai-in-the-entertainment-industry.
[3] “The Stargate Project: Trump Touts $500 Billion Bid For AI Dominance,” Forbes, January 30, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2025/01/30/the-stargate-project-trump-touts-500-billion-bid-for-ai-dominance/.
[4] “AI chip startup Groq secures US$1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia,” The Business Times, February 11, 2025, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/startups-tech/startups/ai-chip-startup-groq-secures-us1-5-billion-commitment-saudi-arabia.
[5] “Canada’s Brookfield to pour €20 billon into French AI infrastructure,” The Economic Times, February 9, 2025, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/canadas-brookfield-to-pour-20-billon-into-french-ai-infrastructure/articleshow/118089702.cms?from=mdr.
[6] “Microsoft to invest $3 billion in India, to expand AI and cloud capacity,” Reuters, January 7, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-invest-3-bln-expand-azure-ai-capacity-india-2025-01-07/.
[7] Embassy of the UAE Washington, DC, “The UAE and US: Forging The Future Of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Tech,” 2024, https://www.uae-embassy.org/uae-us-cooperation/economic/artificial-intelligence.
[8] “UAE to invest billions in France AI data centre,” France24, February 7, 2025, https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250207-uae-to-invest-up-to-€50-billion-in-massive-ai-data-centre-in-france
[9] “AI Protection in ELVIS Act Signals Dire Push for Federal Action,” Bloomberg Law, April 29, 2024, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/ai-protection-in-elvis-act-signals-dire-push-for-federal-action
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©2025 TRENDS Research & Advisory, All Rights Reserved.

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AWS Blogs
The advertising industry is experiencing an exciting transformation thanks to generative AI (GenAI) tools that are revolutionizing campaign creation, digital ad generation, and marketing asset localization. While these innovations present incredible opportunities to streamline workflows and boost creativity, many organizations are navigating questions about which tools to implement, how to effectively integrate them into existing processes, and where to begin their Artificial Intelligence (AI) journey. The traditional process of developing display and video advertising assets, which typically requires weeks or months to produce multiple variations for different formats, placements, and sizes, can now be dramatically accelerated – but organizations need clear strategies to harness these new capabilities. This delay in asset creation slows down campaign launches and reduces market responsiveness.
Generative AI has emerged as a transformative solution augmenting existing human-driven processes, allowing for accelerated production at scale as well as the ability for understanding foundation models (FMs) to learn from large amounts of existing multimodal unstructured data (videos, images, brand books, previous campaign metrics and results) to then incorporate those learnings in new content generation requests.
In this blog post, we will explore the Amazon Nova family of understanding and content generation models, how the models are transforming content creation within Advertising and Marketing, Amazon Nova use-cases, as well as additional resources to get started.
AWS announced Amazon Nova at re:Invent 2024 introducing a new generation of state-of-the-art foundation models (FMs) that deliver advanced and industry-leading price-performance, available exclusively within Amazon Bedrock. The Nova family includes four understanding models (Nova Micro, Nova Lite, Nova Pro, and Amazon Nova Premier) and two creative content generation models (Amazon Nova Canvas and Amazon Nova Reel). Amazon Nova helps agencies, brands, media companies, and advertising and marketing technology organizations create high impact, on brand content at unprecedented speed and scale.
Amazon Nova Micro is a new text-only model that delivers the lowest latency responses within the Nova family of models at a very low cost. Amazon Nova Lite is a new low-cost multimodal model capable of processing image, video, and text inputs to generate text output. Amazon Nova Pro is a new highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide variety of tasks. The Amazon Nova family offers three powerful content generation models, each optimized for different needs. Nova Premier excels at generating complex, multimodal content by processing text, images, and videos with deep contextual understanding. Its 1M token capacity enables sophisticated content creation across multiple formats and extended narratives. Nova Pro and Nova Lite provide targeted content generation capabilities, with Pro offering enhanced capabilities for mid-complexity tasks and Lite optimized for straightforward content creation. All three models seamlessly integrate content generation across 200+ languages, featuring built-in connectors that make it simple to generate content using your existing systems and data sources. This flexibility allows teams to generate everything from social media posts to full marketing campaigns while maintaining brand consistency. Amazon Nova Micro, Amazon Nova Lite, and Amazon Nova Pro are at least 75 percent less expensive than the best performing models in their respective intelligence classes in Amazon Bedrock and are also the fastest models in their respective intelligence classes in Amazon Bedrock. The models also support fine-tuning, allowing advertising and marketing agencies to point the models to examples of their own data (including text, images, and videos) allowing for enhanced brand alignment, improved performance efficiency, and industry-specific expertise.
Amazon Nova Canvas is a new state-of-the-art image generation model that creates professional grade images from text or images provided in prompts. Nova Canvas also provides features that make it easy to edit images using text inputs and provides controls for adjusting color scheme and layout. Nova Canvas allows users to rapidly produce dozens of variations for every marketing material, ad format, placement, and size —reducing time to market from weeks to hours, delivering speed and scalability. The model also comes with built-in controls to support safe and responsible AI use. These include features like watermarking, which allows the source of an image to always be traced, and content moderation, which limits the generation of potentially harmful content. Amazon Nova Canvas performs better than image generators such as OpenAI DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion in side-by-side human evaluations conducted by a third party, and on key automated metrics.
Amazon Nova Reel is a new state-of-the-art video generation model that allows brands and agencies to easily create high-quality video from text and images, complete with natural language prompts to control visual style and pacing, including camera motion, rotation, and zooming. Nova Reel speeds up storyboarding, previsualization (previs), advertisements, trailers, or highlight reels, increasing time-to-market by accelerating overall video output and localization. Nova Reel outperforms comparable models in quality and consistency, according to side-by-side human evaluations conducted by a third party that preferred Amazon Nova Reel-generated videos over those generated by Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha. Like Amazon Nova Canvas, Amazon Nova Reel comes with built-in controls to support safe and responsible AI use, including watermarking and content moderation. Amazon Nova Reel 1.1 was also recently unveiled, upgrading video generation with better quality and reduced latency, now supporting both single-prompt and custom-prompt 2-minute videos composed of consistent-style 6-second shots through Amazon Bedrock.
Amazon Nova models revolutionize content generation, starting with powerful image creation capabilities. Nova Canvas excels at generating entirely new images and creating variations of existing ones, dramatically reducing production time and costs. It offers fine-tuning through Amazon Bedrock, allowing teams to train the model on proprietary data for customized image generation that precisely matches their brand style and characteristics. Organizations can then test and deploy these fine-tuned models using provisioned throughput for reliable performance at scale. Nova Reel extends these capabilities to video, enabling rapid creation of new video content and variations of existing footage. The Amazon Nova family of understanding models (Nova Micro, Nova Lite, Nova Pro, and Nova Premier) as well as the content generation models (Nova Canvas and Nova Reel) are all generally available.
Advertising agency creative departments want to utilize generative AI to enhance and accelerate the creative process. They need models that help them rapidly develop high-quality advertising campaign briefs, concepts, and creative assets leveraging both natural language inputs as well as different types of files including images, video, audio, structured data, and results and insights from previous campaigns. This is hard to accomplish because existing models are limited in terms of the flexibility (fine-tuning and customization) and quality (photorealistic outputs) that they deliver. Video generation is in its early days and customers are still seeking viable options that can be used for creative production needs. These use cases are also sensitive to copyright violation risk and safety considerations for generated content.
With Amazon Nova Pro, agency creative departments can rapidly retrieve insights from a company’s brand book, products descriptions, previous advertising campaigns, and existing marketing materials to generate campaign brief development in minutes instead of weeks. Its multimodal capabilities, which combine text, images, and video inputs to text output, help teams create better brand campaigns faster using AI-driven analysis to process various types of inputs such as past creative, videos, images, keywords, campaign results, and brand attributes. The personalized content creation process is more secure and customized, bringing advertising and campaigns closer to the clients.
Amazon Nova Pro, Amazon Nova Canvas, and Amazon Nova Reel empower creative teams to focus on strategy while automating content creation. Nova Pro streamlines workflows, Nova Canvas enables brand-specific image generation through Bedrock fine-tuning, and Nova Reel 1.1 produces high-quality 2-minute videos with flexible prompt controls – delivering precise, on-brand content at scale.
Creative departments can now leverage generative to accelerate their processes, though finding AI models that effectively handle multiple input types while meeting quality standards remains challenging. Amazon Bedrock addresses this by offering a broad selection of foundation models for multimodal reasoning and content generation, helping agencies enhance creativity and reduce manual tasks. Through Amazon Q or managed agents in Bedrock, agencies can automate complex workflows by integrating various data sources – from brand books to campaign results – enabling AI assistants to develop comprehensive campaign briefs in minutes rather than weeks.
Creating display and video ad campaigns traditionally requires extensive and expensive resources, with companies needing to produce dozens of assets across various formats, placements, and sizes – a process that typically takes weeks and delays market entry. While advertising platforms and media publishers seek generative AI solutions to accelerate this process, finding models that can consistently produce high-fidelity, customizable content while offering optimal price-performance has been challenging. Amazon Nova’s creative content generation models address this challenge by enabling rapid generation of high-quality copy, images, and videos using natural language prompts. This transformation reduces campaign activation time from months to hours while maintaining brand consistency and improving conversion rates, offering publishers and media companies a cost-effective solution for delivering engaging advertising content efficiently.
Using Amazon Nova Canvas and Reel, publishers and advertising technology companies like Amazon Ads can enable their advertising customers to create high-quality images and videos for their display and video campaigns, reducing time-to-activation from weeks to hours, and allowing them to achieve the best price-performance for these workloads. With Amazon Nova Reel, advertisers can use text and natural language inputs to produce high-quality short-form videos, with state-of-the-art visual and temporal consistency. With Amazon Nova Canvas, advertisers can generate highly accurate images leveraging their brand style, product imagery, and natural language inputs. Nova Reel and Nova Canvas help customers activate effective campaigns faster and increase scalability, resulting in increased advertiser satisfaction, lower costs, and faster business growth. Nova Canvas supports fine-tuning in Amazon Bedrock, allowing users to train models on proprietary data to generate brand-matched images with reliable deployment performance. Nova Reel 1.1 now delivers faster, higher-quality 2-minute videos composed of consistent-style 6-second shots, with both single and custom prompt controls through Amazon Bedrock.
Marketing and media technology companies are leveraging generative AI to revolutionize content creation, but face challenges in producing high-quality, culturally relevant content at scale. AWS addresses this through Amazon Bedrock’s comprehensive generative AI capabilities, integrating powerful models like Nova Canvas, Nova Reel, Stability AI, and Luma AI. Combined with agentic AI through Amazon Q and managed agents, teams can now automate and streamline the creation of diverse marketing assets – from copy to videos – while ensuring cultural relevance, brand safety, and proper localization. This integrated approach transforms traditional resource-intensive processes, enabling companies to simultaneously handle multiple campaign components and achieve higher productivity while maintaining quality and brand consistency across global markets.
Using Nova Pro, Nova Canvas, and Nova Reel, media companies like Hearst, Mar-Tech companies such as Shutterstock and 123RF, and their customers, can leverage Amazon Nova’s multi-modal input and content creation models for high-fidelity asset creation and localization. They can more easily and effectively create and localize media and marketing assets at scale, including copy, images, and videos, with superior language reasoning, translation into over 200 languages, and high-quality global scene and image modifications. Amazon Nova Reel and Canvas enable global-scale marketing content creation with local relevance. Nova Canvas supports fine-tuning in Amazon Bedrock on proprietary data for brand-matched images, while Nova Reel 1.1 generates high-quality 2-minute videos with flexible prompt controls, allowing companies to create customized, culturally-relevant marketing materials worldwide.
Agentic AI is reshaping advertising and marketing through intelligent automation, empowering teams to work smarter and scale efficiently. AI agents are transforming three critical areas of marketing and advertising. First, they streamline creative campaign development by analyzing vast data sets to generate comprehensive briefs in minutes instead of weeks. Second, they revolutionize media planning by automating campaign execution, providing real-time insights, and optimizing channel performance through advanced attribution modeling. Finally, AI agents enable sophisticated audience segmentation by processing real-time customer data to deliver personalized content that adapts to evolving preferences. This AI-driven approach converts traditionally lengthy, manual processes into efficient, data-informed strategies that scale effectively.
Amazon Nova Micro, Lite, and Pro are available in US East (N. Virginia), Asia-Pacific (Tokyo), and AWS GovCloud (US-West). Amazon Nova Canvas and Reel are both available in US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and AWS GovCloud (US-West). Amazon Nova Premier is available in US East (N. Virginia) with support for additional regions coming soon. For pricing information, please see Amazon Bedrock pricing. In addition, AWS offers uncapped intellectual property (IP) indemnity coverage for outputs of generally available Amazon Nova models, reducing copyright and IP violation risk for customers. For more information, see AWS AI Service Cards for Amazon Nova Micro, Lite, Pro and Premier, Amazon Nova Canvas and Amazon Nova Reel.
Generative AI has emerged as a transformative force in content generation, driving significant improvements in productivity, time-to-market, and innovation acceleration. Advertising agencies and large brands with in-house creative teams can leverage GenAI to streamline campaign and content creation, enhance the briefing process, augment creativity, and maximize team productivity. AWS generative AI and machine learning (ML) services help organizations reimagine creativity and accelerate innovation so they can generate and test large volumes of creative variations much more quickly and comprehensively. This approach transforms advertising campaign development from inception to completion, providing a more efficient and dynamic creative process.
Begin your creative journey now – explore Amazon Nova through Nova.Amazon.com, Amazon Bedrock Chat and Text Playgrounds, or API integration.
Amazon Ads, Amazon’s advertising platform providing advertising tools and services to brands and advertisers, launched new AI-powered creative tools for generating images, videos, and audio content, making it easier for brands of all sizes to produce high-quality advertising materials. Amazon Ads uses Amazon Nova Canvas to generate high-quality ad creatives, and Amazon Nova Reel for video ad production and creation of varied ad formats across different placements.
Dentsu Digital Inc., a digital marketing company, is integrating Amazon Nova Reel into its creative process, enabling its team to improve and accelerate the development of its campaigns – from briefing, to concept development, to creative video content generation. Amazon Nova Reel reduces the overall time it takes to generate new assets from weeks to days.
Shutterstock is a leading creative platform offering full-service solutions, high-quality content, and tools for transformative brands, digital media, and marketing businesses. Based on the high image quality outputs of Amazon Nova Canvas, the team at Shutterstock is excited to include the model in the Shutterstock AI Image Generator, giving users an intuitive, easy-to-use offering.
Musixmatch is the world’s largest lyrics platform with over 80 million users and a database of more than 11 million unique lyrics. Musixmatch is including Amazon Nova Reel in Musixmatch Pro, which helps creators distribute lyrics across all the major digital streaming services and social networks. Emerging artists can use Amazon Nova Reel to produce high-quality music videos using their songs’ context as inputs, and customize them with natural language prompts.
For further reading, please refer to the following:
Shivam Patel is a Sr. Solutions Architect at AWS helping enterprises architect and implement cloud-native solutions. His core areas of focus are Migration & Modernization, Generative AI, and Cloud Operations/Cloud Governance. Outside of work, Shivam, is an avid food connoisseur, New York Yankees & New York Knicks fanatic, and globetrotter.
Satish is a Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS. He is passionate about customer success and technology. He loves working backwards by quickly understanding strategic customer objectives, aligning them to software capabilities and effectively driving customer success.
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How have consumer behaviors and preferences changed across different generations?
Brandwatch Consumer Research
Formerly the Falcon suite
Formerly Paladin
Published October 25^th 2024
Find the best digital marketing tools to streamline your SEO, SoMe, content, and automation strategies in 2025.
Being a digital marketing manager is not easy. You create and manage all kinds of digital marketing campaigns across multiple channels. You analyze data to optimize campaigns and collaborate with other teams.
It’s a lot to handle, and that’s why digital marketing tools need to come into play. The right digital marketing tools will make your job much easier and take repetitive tasks from your shoulders, so you have more time to focus and more creative and strategic areas.
There are digital marketing tools for every aspect of your job. Whether it’s planning, analyzing, or creating visuals, there’s a tool to help you with that. There are tools for SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing, social media marketing, content creation, and more all waiting to be discovered. 
With the right tools, you not only save time and money but improve your digital marketing strategy. You can reach more customers, track your performance better, and ultimately drive sales.
Feeling overwhelmed right now? Don’t worry, we have you covered. In this blog, we look at helpful tools broken down by different categories.
In this article, we cover the following: 
Digital marketing tools are software and platforms that support your digital marketing activities. They make your job easier and save you time, be it reaching customers, collaborating with other teams, or running social media campaigns.
There are tools for every aspect of digital marketing:
As you can see, these tools support a wide range of marketing efforts. For example, social media management tools allow you to schedule posts in advance across multiple channels, while search engine optimization tools like Ahrefs provide essential features for optimizing websites, particularly focusing on backlink analysis and leveraging extensive data indexes.
That said, you don’t need to use every tool in our list. The right tool for you will depend on factors like your needs, business goals, size of your team, and budget. Whether you’re a beginner searching for budget-friendly options or seeking advanced tools for more complex needs, there are options for everyone.
The key is choosing the tools that can boost your digital marketing strategy. The right tools are easy to use, help you work smarter, and grow your online presence.
There are many reasons why you and your team should start using digital marketing tools. They save you time and money, help you boost your online presence, and take over automated tasks so you spend less time on routine work and can focus more on strategic and creative projects.
First off, these tools give you access to a lot of useful data about customers and prospects. You can learn about their preferences, behaviors, and needs. With this knowledge, you can create more targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience. 
You can track your campaigns and see how they are performing in real time, which means you can tweak and optimize your campaigns as needed to get better results. With social media management tools and social listening, you can schedule posts in advance and see when your audience is the most active to publish at the best times. Meanwhile, email marketing tools help you send personalized messages to a large databaseand understand which email campaigns work best.
Improving collaboration is another plus. Collaboration tools make it easier for your team to work together, share ideas, and stay on top of projects. With the right tool, you can improve communication and productivity in your team and with other teams.
Here are some key benefits of using digital marketing tools:
By leveraging these tools, your marketing efforts can become more streamlined, leading to better results for your business.
Choosing the best digital marketing tool that fits your needs can feel overwhelming. There are a lot of factors to consider, such as your business goals, team size, and budget. If you are a small team with a limited budget, beginner-friendly tools might be the best options for you. On the other hand, if you are running more complex campaigns, you need something more advanced. Start making a list of features you need in a tool and go from there. 
Another point to consider is whether the tool can be integrated with software you are already using which, again, will save you time.
A seamless user experience is also important. How easy is the tool to use? How long will it take your team to learn the features? Ideally, you want a tool that is intuitive to use but can help you grow your business. Check if the tool offers support and training materials that can help your team to get up to speed. 
If possible, take advantage of free trials. They allow you to test the tool to see if it suits your workflow before committing. It’s also a good idea to talk to other marketers about what tools they’re using—their insights can save you from wasting money on something that doesn’t meet your needs.
Lastly, think long-term. As your business grows, your needs will likely change, so pick tools that can scale up as your campaigns become more complex.
Here are a few things to look out for when selecting a digital marketing tool:
Let’s dive into some of the top tools that can help you boost your digital marketing. We split the following tools into different areas of digital marketing to make it easier for you to find what you need.
Social media management tools make posting across platforms and tracking the performance easier. With the right one, you’ll save a lot of time and can identify which content and campaigns work best with your audience.
These tools help your website climb higher in search results. They provide helpful suggestions on how to improve your content and find the right keywords to target.
With email marketing tools, you can send out emails at scale, design them the best way, and track your campaigns’ performance.
These are designed to help you create eye-catching posts, videos, and images, making your marketing content look more polished and professional.
Analytics tools are important to understand how your marketing is performing. They can help you measure metrics like website visitors or ad clicks and give a clear picture of what is working and what is not.
These tools improve team collaboration by helping you plan projects, share files, and communicate all from one place. They’re perfect for keeping everyone on the same page and increase productivity.
With video marketing tools, you can create and share high-quality videos that capture the attention of your audience and bring across your message clearly.
The right tool can make a huge difference in your day-to-day work as a social media manager. They can help you to plan, create, and schedule posts across multiple social platforms, all from one dashboard. Plus, you can reply to comments, track engagement, and analyze your content’s performance without having to switch between multiple apps.
Using a social media management tool saves time and boosts your productivity. Instead of juggling different platforms, everything you need is in one place, making your workflow smoother and more efficient.
Each tool comes with its own set of unique features, so it’s important to choose one that aligns with your goals and needs. The right tool helps you to cut down repetitive tasks so you’ll have more time to focus on your social media strategy.
Brandwatch is a powerful tool for social media management and analytics, designed to give you a deep understanding of your audience, track brand mentions, and stay ahead of your competitors.
With Brandwatch, you can monitor conversations across social media platforms, blogs, and news sites. This helps you stay on top of what people are saying about your brand.
One of its many standout features is the ability to monitor conversations across multiple social platforms in real-time. With these insights, you can keep up with what people are saying about your brand and respond and adapt quickly.
Another big advantage is the many customization options that Brandwatch provides. You can tailor dashboards and reports to your needs. Brandwatch also integrates well with other marketing platforms, making it easy to be implemented into your existing workflow.
Brandwatch is also a great platform for content management. You can plan, create, and schedule posts for multiple social networks from one single dashboard. It also provides the latest AI technologies that help you improve your writing and automate replies.
With the in-depth analytics features, you can track trends, measure sentiment, and measure your performance. The many and customizable visualizations make it easy to break down a huge amount of data and share insights with your team or clients in simple and easy-to-digests reports.
Brandwatch is a perfect choice for medium to large companies and agencies. It’s advanced features can handle even the most complex social media strategies, and customer support and many training materials are available to help get your team up to speed in no time.
Sprout Social is another big name in the social media management tool market. The tool can help you streamline your social media workflow and give you insights about your online presence. 
One helpful feature is the unified inbox, from which you can manage all your social interactions from one place. This makes it much easier to respond to messages and engage with your audience. You can publish and schedule posts across multiple social networks, saving you a lot of time and work.
The analytics capabilities are another key feature. You can track your performance, measure engagement, and identify trends that will help you improve your social media strategy. You can customize the reports to your needs.
Moreover, Sprout Social can be integrated with other popular platforms for a seamless workflow. While the platform has a user-friendly interface, some features can require some training.
Like Brandwatch, Sprout Social is useful for medium to large business that are looking for a social media management tool.
Hootsuite is another popular choice in the world of social media management. The tool can help you grow your online presence and improve your social media strategy.
The platform also offers analytics to track your performance. You can monitor how well your posts are doing, what’s working best, and make adjustments as needed. Like the other platforms on the list, with Hootsuite you can manage different social media accounts from one place and easily schedule posts across social networks like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. This means you can not only save time but also make sure that your content is consistent across all social platforms.
Hootsuite works well with other marketing tools. A downside can be that the interface is somewhat cluttered, and it takes some time to get used to all the features.
Overall Hootsuite is an option to consider regardless of your company size, with multiple plans to choose from.
Buffer is a handy tool for anyone looking to manage their social media presence. The tool can be easily integrated with many other tools – for example Canva, a graphic design tool. This way you can create stunning graphics without having to jump between different apps.
Like other social media management tools, you can post and schedule your content across multiple social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X, saving you a lot of time and helping you keep consistency.
Buffer also comes with analytics capabilities. You can measure how your posts are performing, and which kind of content gets the most likes, comments, and shares. With these insights, you can improve your social media marketing strategy.
Overall, Buffer is particularly well-suited for small businesses and individuals who want to simplify their social media efforts. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible even for beginners, so you don’t need to be a tech whiz to get started.
If you are a digital marketer that wants to boost the visibility of your website, you need an SEO tool. With the right tool, you can track your rankings, optimize your content, and stay one step ahead of your competitors.
SEO tools are all about improving your search engine rankings. They offer valuable insights into keywords, backlinks, and competitor strategies. Search engine optimization tools like Ahrefs provide essential features for optimizing websites, particularly focusing on backlink analysis and leveraging extensive data indexes.
Here’s what you can achieve with SEO tools:
Choosing the right SEO tool can have a big influence on your digital marketing success. Let’s dive into some top tools available on the market and how they can enhance your SEO efforts.
Semruh is a solid tool for anyone working in digital marketing. It’s an all-in-one platform that covers a wide range of areas, including SEO, content marketing, competitor research, and PPC.
The platform provides tools that help you improve your content marketing. You can create, plan, and optimize your content to receive higher engagement. It offers topic suggestions, SEO recommendations, and even readability scores to ensure your content hits the mark.
If you’re running PPC campaigns, Semrush can come in handy. With its keyword suggestions and ad copy ideas, you can improve your advertisements. Once your campaigns are live, you can track the performance of your ads and compare them against competitors.
Speaking of competitors, you can also perform a more extensive competitor analysis. You can examine your competitors’ strategies, such as their top-performing keywords and backlinks. These insights can help you to optimize your strategies and stay ahead in the market.
Another great feature is Semrush’s keyword research feature. It lets you explore search volume, keyword difficulty, and related terms to help you boost your organic traffic. The backlink audit tool checks your website for technical SEO issues and offers suggestions to optimize your site for better visibility on Google. 
Overall, Semrush is a fantastic option for businesses of all sizes, especially for digital marketers, SEO professionals, and content creators who want to have all of their data in one place.
Ahrefs is a top choice for many in the SEO and digital marketing field. The platforms come with many features like keyword research that lets you analyze millions of keywords with detailed metrics like search volume, difficulty, or potential traffic.
With the content explorer tool, you can discover popular content in your niche that give you inspiration for your content and campaigns. Ahrefs also shines in the realm of technical SEO. Its Site Audit tool crawls your website and identifies issues that might be hindering your search rankings.
The site explorer feature is another useful feature. You can look at your competitors websites and see their top pages, backlink profiles, and overall organic search performance. These insights can be incredibly valuable as you craft your SEO strategy. 
Another great thing about Ahrefs is its user-friendly interface. Even if you’re just starting with SEO, you’ll find it easy to navigate and make sense of the data it provides.
Overall, Ahrefs is perfect for SEO professionals, digital marketers, and content creators who need deep insights and analysis. If you’re serious about boosting your website’s search performance, Ahrefs is definitely a tool worth having in your toolkit.
Email marketing is one of the most important areas in digital marketing. It’s a great way to connect with your customers, and there are plenty of excellent tools on the market that can help you launch and manage your email campaigns.
As you look for the right tool, think about your goals and budget. The ideal tool is user-friendly and integrates easily with other marketing software you use. Customer support is also an important factor to consider, making sure you have the assistance when a problem comes up.
Helpful email marketing tools will have:
Pre-designed email templatesList segmentation optionsAutomated workflowsDetailed analytics and reportingA/B testing capabilitiesChoose tools that empower you to create engaging emails and track their performance. With their analytics features you can track open rates, click-through rates, and conversations. Additionally, look for features that help grow your list, like signup forms and landing pages.
Mailchimp is a well-known platform in the email marketing space, and for good reasons. It’s an all-rounder that lets you create and send email campaigns, manage your customer lists, and track your performance. 
One of the best things about Mailchimp is its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. You don’t need any design experience to create nice-looking emails. You can choose from a range of templates or design your own from scratch.
With Mailchimp, you can segment your audience into different groups. This helps you to tailor your messages and send emails to specific groups. You can categorize your contacts based on their purchase history or how engaged they are with your content.
Mailchimp also has automations features that will save you a lot of time. You can set up automatic welcome emails, birthday messages, and reminders for abandoned carts. The platform also comes with SMS marketing features, letting you send text messages for sales, promotions, or important updated.
When it comes to tracking performance, Mailchimp’s reporting tools are quite robust. You can monitor open rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics to see how your campaigns are doing. It can also be integrated easily with a lot of other marketing platforms.
Mailchimp is a great choice for small to medium-sized businesses that are looking for a comprehensive marketing solution. It’s useful for e-commerce brands that want to automate their email marketing. If you’re just starting in digital marketing, Mailchimp’s user-friendly interface and helpful resources will make it easy for you to get the hang of it quickly.
ActiveCampaign is a helpful tool to boost your email marketing campaigns. It combines email marketing with automation and customer relationship management, making it a great choice for businesses looking to grow and nurture leads. 
The tool works smoothly with a variety of other platforms, allowing you to connect it to your website, e-commerce store, and other apps you are using. Its reporting and analytics features provide detailed insights into how your campaigns are performing, enabling you to make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy.
With ActiveCampaign, you can create personalized emails. It has a user-friendly interface to easily design engaging email, even if you are not very tech-savvy.
Where ActiveCampaign truly excels is in its advanced automation capabilities. You can create complex workflows that engage customers based on their behavior and preferences, helping you build meaningful connections.
While the platform offers a wealth of features, it may take some time to get familiar with them. Fortunately, they provide a wealth of resources and support to help you along the way.
ActiveCampaign is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses that want to take their email marketing to the next level. It’s a great choice for companies that want to automate their customer communications and sales processes.
Creating compelling content is crucial for successful digital marketing and the right tool can help improve your content strategy.
A good writing tool will boost your productivity and increase the quality of your content. Platforms that have the latest AI technologies can assist you in crafting blog posts, ad copy, and other types of content. They offer suggestions for improvement, and they can speed up your writing process.
When it comes to graphic design, there are tools available that allow you to create eye-catching visuals without needing a design background. You can easily create social media posts, presentations, flyers, and more, either by customizing your designs to fit your brand style or by choosing from a library of templates.
With these tools, you can not only improve the quality of your content but save a lot of time. By streamlining your content creation process, you have more time to create more engaging content that resonates with your audiences.
Let’s explore some top options that can help you craft engaging posts, stunning graphics, and more.
Canva is a user-friendly graphic design tool that makes it easy for anyone to create stunning marketing materials, even if you don’t have a design background.
With Canva, you can create social media posts, presentations, flyers, and more. Its drag-and-drop interface is straightforward, making it easy to use even for beginners. The tool offers a big library of templates, images, and fonts you can choose from. You can also upload your own images and logos.
One great feature is the ability to resize your design for different platforms, which saves you a lot of time when you have to great content for multiple social media channels.
Canva also comes with video editing features, allowing you to create short clips for social media or presentations. While it may have some limitations for more complex projects, it’s more than enough for most digital marketing needs.
Jasper is an AI-powered writing assistant that can take your content marketing to the next level. Whether you need to write blog posts, social media updates, ad copy, or anything in between, Jasper has you covered.
The tool can generate content based on your inputs. Provide some basic information, and it will create entire paragraphs for you. You can choose from an extensive library of 50 writing templates that cover different types of content. Each template guides you through the writing process step-by-step, making it easy to get started.
Jasper can be integrated with popular SEO tools, allowing you to optimize your content for search engines as you write. While it might take a little time to get comfortable with all the features, the effort is worth it.
If you frequently create marketing content, Jasper is worth considering. It’s especially useful for content marketers, social media managers, and bloggers. The tool can adapt to different tones and styles, making sure the copy aligns with your brand voice.
You need to track your performance to discover areas for improvement, and this is the only way to make sure you stay ahead of your competition. Analytics and data tools provide the insights you need to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Analytics tools can offer offer detailed information about all kinds of things like your website visitors, their behavior, and how your content is performing. With the right analytics tools, you can:
By leveraging these tools, you’ll be able to fine-tune your digital marketing strategy and achieve better results.
Google Analytics is a must-have tool for anyone involved in digital marketing. It provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website, helping you understand where they come from and what actions they take.
You can identify which pages are the most popular and detect what content resonates best with your audience. The tool lets you track how long users stay on your site and whether they leave without engaging.
With Google Analytics, you can also discover which marketing channels are driving the most traffic. You can see how effective your social media, search engine, and ads efforts are. Its dashboard gives you a quick snapshot of your site’s performance, and if you need more detail, you can create custom reports. You can even set specific goals to monitor key actions like sales or sign-ups. 
One other benefit of Google Analytics is that it can easily be integrated with other Google tools, such as Ads and Search Console. This way, you can get a fuller picture of your digital marketing performance.
Google Analytics is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It’s easy to set up, and you don’t need to be a tech expert to use its basics features. The huge amount of data can feel overwhelming at first, and it takes a bit of time to figure out what’s most useful for you. However, once you get the hang of it, the insights you gain are invaluable.
SurveyMonkey is a great online survey tool that can help you gather valuable insights from your customers to make better data-driven business decisions.
With this tool, you can make professional-looking surveys with ease. The platform features a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and a variety of pre-designed templates, so you don’t need any prior experience to get started quickly.
You can choose from different question types, such as multiple choice, open-ended questions, and rating scales. SurveyMonkey lets you customize your survey to your needs to make sure that you collect the most relevant information from your audience. The platform also has advanced features like skip logic and questions randomization.
One of the great things about SurveyMonkey is its ability to reach a broad audience. You can share your surveys through email, social media, or even embed them on your website. Plus, it integrates smoothly with many popular marketing tools, allowing you to connect your survey data to other aspects of your marketing strategy.
Furthermore, SurveyMonkey provides insightful analytics that give you a quick overview of your survey results. You can monitor responses in real time and create visually appealing charts and graphs to help make sense of your data.
SurveyMonkey is perfect for marketers wanting to do market research, track customer satisfaction, and gather feedback on new products. It’s also an excellent choice for businesses aiming to enhance their customer experience based on direct input from their audience.
Managing digital marketing projects can be quite a challenge. Handling multiple projects and complex workflows quickly can become chaotic. Project management and collaboration tools can help you to keep your team organized and make sure that your campaigns are running smoothly.
Collaboration tools support you in streamlining tasks, sharing files, and making communicating among team members easier. They help you to manage complex projects with ease.
Great project management and collaboration tools will come with these important features:
The best tools are easy to use, can be tailored to your team needs, and will improve productivity. Think about what your team struggles with the most. Do you need better task tracking? Easier file sharing? More effective communication? Choose a tool that can solve your biggest challenges and boost teamwork.
Let’s explore some top options for project management and collaboration in the marketing space.
Trello is a great choice to help with your project management. You can keep tasks organized and boost collaboration within your team through its visual boards and cards.
You can set up different boards for various marketing campaigns or projects, with each board containing lists and cards that represent specific tasks or ideas. The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to move cards between lists, giving you a clear view of your progress.
With Trello, you can assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, or add comments directly to the cards. There are plenty of productivity-boosting features, like labels for categorizing tasks, checklists within cards, and automation options to simplify workflows. 
The tool is quite flexible. You can customize your boards to fit your needs, whether you’re planning content calendars, managing social media posts, or tracking campaign performance.
Trello excels in visual organization, but may not be the best choice for more complex projects. It’s a great choice for marketing teams of all sizes, especially for those who prefer a visual approach to managing tasks and need a tool that can easily adapt to various marketing workflows.
Asana is a popular tool in the project management and collaboration space. You can create boards, lists, and timelines, making it simple to visualize your projects. This helps you to see immediately what needs to be done and who is responsible for each task. 
The platform also offers customizable templates tailored for different marketing activities. Whether you’re setting up workflows for content calendars, product launches, or social media campaigns, you can get started quickly.
Asana also comes with helpful reporting features. You can create charts and graphs to monitor progress and see what areas may need some extra attention. The tool can be easily integrated with other popular marketing tools for a seamless workflow.
While Asana has a lot of features, which might feel a bit overwhelming at first, once you get the hang of it, it will boost your team’s productivity. It’s perfect for marketing teams of any size that manage multiple projects and tight deadlines. Asana is also a great choice for remote teams, making sure that everyone is informed and on track.
Video marketing has become a vital part for many digital marketers. With the right video marketing tool, you can create, host, and analyze your video content all in one place without having to be an expert.
When choosing a video tool, it’s important to consider your specific needs. Are you looking for user-friendly editing features? In-depth analysis? Or perhaps the ability to add captions or interactive elements?
A great video marketing tool can help you to:
Let’s look at some of the top options that help you to create engaging videos without a hassle.
Wistia is a great video marketing platform that provides you with a set of tools to help you create, manage, and analyze your video content. You can easily upload your videos, and the platform comes with a lot of customization options. For example, you can tailor the video player to match your brand for a more cohesive viewing experience.
One helpful feature of Wistia is its lead capture capability. It lets you add forms directly to your videos, making it easy to turn viewers into potential customers. This feature can easily be connected to many popular CRM systems to manage your leads.
With the analytics features, you can see who is watching your videos, how long they stay engaged, and when they drop off. You can add chapters to your long-form webinars, allowing viewers to jump quickly to sections they are interested in. 
Wistia is an excellent choice for businesses of any size that want to do video marketing. If you are looking for a tool that helps you generate leads and gain insights from your video content, Wistia could be the perfect fit for you.
Another well-known platform for video hosting and marketing is Vimeo. This advanced tool makes it easy to create, manage, and share high-quality video content. The platform comes along with strong privacy settings, allowing you to control who gets to see your content.
You can produce high-quality videos even if you don’t have a background in design. The tool offers plenty of customizable templates, an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, and you can tailor the videos to your brand’s style.
Vimeo also offers insightful analytics that give you a clear picture of viewer engagement, helping you understand which content connects best with your audience. You can add calls to action and email capture forms directly to your videos to generate leads. Vimeo can be integrated with many other popular marketing tools and content management systems. 
If you want to enhance the quality of your videos and require professional-grade hosting, Vimeo is an excellent choice. It’s particularly useful for businesses aiming to cultivate a polished brand image through video content.
Digital marketing tools can boost your business by helping you with everything from social media management to customer engagement to analytics. Here are some of the most common questions people have about digital marketing tools.
As a beginner, focus on user-friendly tools. Google Analytics is fantastic for tracking your website traffic, Canva helps you to create amazing visuals, and with Mailchimp, you can improve your email marketing. Look for tools that offer free plans or are budget-friendly so you can try out their features before you make a commitment.
Free tools can help you to grow your small business without stretching your budget. While they may not have as many advanced features than pricier options, they typically will cover your essential needs. They can help you build your online presence and reach new customers without having to spend a lot of money.
Google Analytics is a must-have for any marketer, providing excellent insights into website data. For social media analytics, Brandwatch is a great tool that offers deep insights that can help you make smarter, data-driven marketing decisions.
Many digital marketing tools can be integrated with many social media platforms. For example, Brandwatch partners with major social networks and integrates with Salesforce.
Paid tools often have a wider range of features and better support. They offer more advance analytics, additional automation options, and higher usage limits. If you are a business with complex projects and a bigger team, paid tools are likely best placed to meet your needs.
It’s a good idea to review your toolkit every six to twelve months to check what updates or new features are available. See if the tools you are using are still meeting your needs and if they don’t it might be time to search for an upgrade. The digital landscape changes quickly, so being able to adapt quickly is key to staying ahead.
When it comes to understanding consumers, businesses choose Brandwatch ahead of any other tool.
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Existing customer?Log in to access your existing Falcon products and data via the login menu on the top right of the page.New customer?You’ll find the former Falcon products under ‘Social Media Management’ if you go to ‘Our Suite’ in the navigation.
Brandwatch acquired Paladin in March 2022. It’s now called Influence, which is part of Brandwatch’s Social Media Management solution.Want to access your Paladin account?Use the login menu at the top right corner.

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