Assets are items that have value. Things like cars, a house, or maybe a yacht come to mind because it's easy to understand the high value of these objects. What has been more difficult for some people to grasp is the high value of digital assets. When people are asked about the value of their videos and images of their children's birthdays, most will say that they are "priceless" and they are right. You can't put a price on digital assets that have captured events that can never be experienced again. They are invaluable for the people who took those images even if they don't mean anything for anyone else.
On the other hand, digital assets for business do have a price and they are worth a heck of a lot. The "virtual" or "non-physical" nature of digital assets makes it difficult to easily place a price on them, yet companies know they are highly valuable. It's also challenging to state the value of a particular asset because this can vary over time. For example, images of products that are unpopular now but end up being a commercial hit three years later go from seemingly being worth very little to suddenly being worth far more than their weight in gold (if they weighed anything at all).
For this reason, companies need to view much of their corporate image library in terms of potential, hidden value. Even if certain videos or images aren't being used at the moment, that doesn't mean that they won't be extremely helpful at some later time. They could help sell a product just the way they are, or they might jump in value by changing a bit or being used as templates for other assets. Either way, it pays to hold onto them for their potential value.
The plastic ability of assets from a digital image library to be used in more than one way makes them especially valuable because they can be reused and reformed to make more assets. Just imagine the amount of time and money saved by reusing an asset instead of designing and creating a new one? For example, an asset valued at $600 that ends up being reused ten times and employed as a template to create ten new assets is worth at least $12,000. Take into consideration the amount saved on production costs and it's worth far more. It's going to be difficult to locate and reuse it though, without some good digital asset management tools. Of course you will also need to keep it and all other company digital assets safe and sound with cloud based brand asset management software.