The last two years have brought myriad changes in how marketing and creative teams work together. The online proofing space has been no exception, with many new developments in how teams review and approve creative content. With all of this change, now is a perfect time to take a moment to reflect on recent changes in the industry and what the future of online proofing holds.
Distributed collaboration
However the future of work unfolds, collaboration tools for distributed teams are here to stay. Why? Because the need to keep teams, clients, and others connected—wherever they are—has never been clearer. This has proven especially true in online proofing, where the many stakeholders, steps, and exchanges involved in review and approval require constant collaboration and alignment. As a result, and as our own research has found, more marketing and creative teams have evolved formal content review processes and adopted online proofing than ever before.
And while Ziflow has always made it easy for teams to work together from any anywhere, the heightened pressures of remote work have led us to innovate even more flexible and intuitive tools for collaboration. Ziflow’s new Proof Viewer, including its recent expansion of media support, is just one example of many. But even more than the progress that online proofing has made in this area, what excites me most is how much more we can do to make staying connected truly effortless for every team.
Rising demand for content
With global audiences spending more time online than ever, the demand for new content has surged. Of course, this trend has been underway for a while now as the range of digital channels and formats has kept on expanding. But with audiences now expecting even more fresh content from the companies they engage with, many marketing and creative teams have struggled to keep up. In fact, simply maintaining the right level of content output was the single biggest goal of the 100+ brands and agencies we surveyed last year.
With ineffective review processes continuing to bottleneck teams right as their work reaches the finish line, the online proofing space has a unique opportunity to help brands and agencies rise to the challenge and deliver the content audiences expect. At Ziflow, we’ve leaned into this challenge, raising the efficiency of review and approval in a wide range of ways that help teams get more done in less time. Our continued release of new capabilities for automating review and approval workflows counts as one example, but, as with team collaboration, there is still much we can do to help teams make the most of their time. This brings me to the most recent changes in the online proofing landscape and what’s ahead.
Industry news and what's next
With the rise of distributed work and audience demand for new content, it’s no wonder that the online proofing space has been changing quickly. The number of teams adopting online proofing has grown, the range of features they expect has expanded, and the need for an integrated solution has become critical.
In one of the most recent developments, Adobe announced its intent to acquire Frame.io, an online video proofing tool catered to video producers and editors. Besides underscoring the need for bringing creative design and review together, as Ziflow’s Adobe plugins for a wide range of media including video content do now, this news comes as a testament to the continued growth and innovation in online proofing yet to come.
Ziflow's Adobe Plugin for Premiere Pro
Because while online proofing has undoubtedly succeeded in simplifying the review and approval process, much of the essential work of review and approval - looking at a piece of content and ensuring its quality and compliance - has remained the same. Making this work as easy and seamless as the routing of proofs to reviewers is the next big frontier for online proofing. It’s a future that we know teams are already ready for and one that we here at Ziflow are excited to help build in the months and years ahead.
