You Won’t Own Your Visual Content. You’ll Subscribe to Performance.
You Won’t Own Your Visual Content. You’ll Subscribe to Performance.
From Hoping to Knowing
For decades, companies have invested enormous resources in visual content. The process was familiar: agencies, art directors, photographers, stylists, post-production specialists, project managers. Highly skilled professionals, each excellent at their craft.
The problem? They were rarely aligned around the same objective.
When you stood on a photoshoot in Tuscany with perfect light and a large crew, the goal was to create a beautiful image. Atmosphere. Aesthetic. Brand feeling. But no one knew in that moment whether the image would actually perform when it launched two months later in a campaign and on your website.
You produced. You hoped. You measured afterwards.
That model is dying.
A Subscription to Performance
In the near future — and we are closer than most think — companies will no longer “own” their visual assets. They will subscribe to visual performance.
An image will no longer be treated as a static asset, but as a temporary performer. It will be continuously monitored. When performance drops, it will be replaced immediately. Not at the next quarterly review. Not when the marketing team has bandwidth. But the moment data shows decline.
In the GEO era — where both humans and machines interpret your visuals — the average lifespan of an image is expected to be 3–6 weeks. After that, relevance declines. Not necessarily because the image is bad, but because context shifts, audiences evolve, algorithms adjust, and fatigue sets in.
The static hero shot is no longer a long-term investment. It is a short-term performance unit.
From Campaign to Infrastructure
For CMOs, the implications are significant.
No more runaway production budgets caused by unforeseen complications. No more weather-dependent shoots collapsing under rain. No more visuals running on autopilot long after they stopped delivering impact.
Instead, you get continuous optimisation. Seasonally adaptive visuals. Real-time performance monitoring. And the confidence that your visual layer is actively working for your brand — even while your organisation is focused on everything else.
Visual content is shifting from being a project to becoming infrastructure.
This does not eliminate creativity. It elevates it. Creativity becomes directly connected to measurable effect. Beauty alone is no longer enough.
The right image, at the right time, with documented performance — that is what matters.
The Uncomfortable Reality
The real question is not whether this shift will happen. It already is.
The question is whether marketing organisations are willing to accept that ownership is no longer the objective.
In the near future, you won’t own your visual content. You will lease its performance.
Michael Rying founded Scenes, Denmark’s first AI content agency, in the summer of 2023 and has since been at the forefront of adopting AI in the brand and marketing industry.
