Air vs. Focal
Air is a well-regarded creative ops DAM. Focal is built for managing ad creative production and assets: automatic tagging, channel uploads, and performance.
Air is a genuinely well-regarded creative operations DAM. Reviewers consistently praise its AI search, clean interface, and review tools. But it depends on a team actively maintaining it, and it wasn't built around ad performance. There's no project management features either, so larger teams typically need a separate project management tool like Asana on top.
Focal offers creative asset and project management where creatives live natively with the tasks. Assets are tagged and named automatically on upload, we support bulk actions natively, and offer direct uploads to Meta, TikTok and YouTube with performance data connected back to the asset.
Air vs. Focal main differences
Air has a great reputation as one of the more modern, well-liked digital asset management tools on the market. Reviewers consistently praise its ease of use, AI-powered search and its clean, visual interface. One reviewer working across Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects specifically called out Air's frame-accurate review tools and deep native integration with those edit tools.
One of Air's main issues is that it requires manual effort to maintain and organization holds up only as well as a team keeps maintaining it. "It is only as helpful as I make it," one reviewer put it, "meaning that I can make it much more helpful and organized as I label assets and place them in folders in thoughtful ways." Another, a Lead Creative Editor, was more direct: "It can get cluttered really fast, and once there's no clear structure in the workspace, it becomes very hard to navigate."
Bulk actions are a related gap: 20+ mentions of missing batch export and mass tagging show up in Air's own aggregate review data from the last few months, and reviewers describe tagging or moving assets one at a time rather than in bulk.
None of the reviews mention upload integrations with Meta, TikTok or YouTube. Performance-focused teams we've spoken with describe the naming and tracking needed to get an asset from Air into a live ad as still a largely manual, cross-tool process. You need to write a brief in one tool, upload the final asset to Air, then manually cross-referencing it back to build a naming convention, track it in a separate spreadsheet, and most likely do the project management in a separate platform if you need deeper project management capabilities.
Focal is built around the asset itself and is far more than a clean storage system. Everything is tagged, organized, and named automatically the moment it's uploaded, with bulk actions native throughout, and uploaded directly to Meta, TikTok and YouTube with performance data connected back to it. You can also build a deep, customized taxonomy for your AI tagging so you categorize creative material exactly as you need it, not based on a naming convention someone else made up.
Focal offers a true end-to-end path from brief to live ad, with the project management in the same platform and natively incorporating the creative assets.
Choosing the right tool for your team
Choose Air if… | Choose Focal if… |
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What creative teams say after using Air
Air's aggregate G2 reviews are strong: 180+ mentions of ease of use, 90+ of easy organization. To get a fuller picture, we read broadly across reviews from the past 12 months.
On AI search strength: "I really like Air's AI feature for searching because it's super handy for quickly finding assets from the last 20 years just by typing what I'm looking for." — Derick S., G2 reviewer
On organization depending entirely on upkeep: "It is only as helpful as I make it, meaning that I can make it much more helpful and organized as I label assets and place them in folders in thoughtful ways." — G2 reviewer, Apparel & Fashion
"It can get cluttered really fast, and once there's no clear structure in the workspace, it becomes very hard to navigate. The search function also often doesn't work the way we need it to when trying to find specific footage." — Cristian R., Lead Creative Editor
On bulk actions being missing: "I wish it was easier to copy and paste assets in Air. For example, we created a separate folder for B Roll, however, I manually have to go through each asset and select 'move to...' and then select from a drop down to move that piece of content." — Iniki M., Creator Coordinator (performance marketing company)
On format gaps for ad-specific work: "Figma integration is less than impressive. Would love support for carousel (social) posts as well." — G2 reviewer, Health, Wellness and Fitness
On search sometimes falling short: "I think searching could be better. It's often not easy to find folders." — Sam B., G2 reviewer
Air's search, review capabilities and interface are widely-praised strengths, and it's a real step up from a shared drive for many teams. At the end of the day it's still a general creative-ops DAM that still needs a maintained structure and separate tools like project management software to reach a live ad, not a system built end-to-end around ad performance.
What teams using Focal say
At the time of writing, Focal sits at 4.7/5 on G2. Where Air's reviewers describe a well-organized library that still needs manual tagging and separate tools to reach a live ad, Focal's reviewers describe the entire path from upload to launch happening automatically, in one place.
On tagging and naming happening automatically instead of by hand: "My favorite part is the automation features, especially auto-renaming, which saves everyone hours and keeps things consistent and tidy. The AI-automated tagging is amazing too—it really helps with creative insights and reduces manual work." — G2 reviewer, Senior Marketing Animator
On the full path from asset to live channel, in one place: "It helps us to get a clear process for creatives, from storing them to naming them and pushing them to Meta." — G2 reviewer, Marketing and Advertising
Another review praised Focal's end-to-end capabilities as follows:
Focal also gets consistent praise for being user friendly:
Comparing Air and Focal features
| Focal | |
|---|---|---|
Automatic asset tagging and file naming | AI tagging available; naming and folder structure are manually maintained | Automatic on upload, using your own custom taxonomy |
Bulk actions (mass tag, mass move) | Limited — multiple reviewers describe tagging or moving assets one at a time | Native bulk actions throughout |
Meta, TikTok, YouTube channel uploads | Not available | Native, direct upload |
Performance data connected to the asset | Not available | Yes |
Frame-accurate video review | Yes, including deep native integration with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects | Yes, native in the same platform as tagging and performance data |
Guest and external access controls | Reviewers note limited permission granularity for non-admin users and no visibility into external folder access | Dedicated guest views scoped to what a vendor or agency should see |
Ad-specific formats (e.g. carousel/social post support) | Not available, per reviewer feedback | Built for the formats performance teams actually ship |
Asset organization: Focal's asset library tags and names every creative automatically on upload, using your own taxonomy, so organization doesn't depend on someone maintaining it. Air's organization is genuinely clean when a team keeps it up, several reviewers say so directly, but just as many describe it becoming cluttered fast once nobody's actively tending to the folder structure.
Bulk operations: This is one of Air's most consistently reported gaps. Reviewers describe tagging, moving, and exporting assets one at a time; the aggregate review data shows 24 mentions of missing batch export and mass tagging. Focal's tagging, naming, and organization apply automatically and in bulk from the moment an asset is uploaded. Focal also features extensive task automation capabilities through Focal MCP and Workflows (more in the video below):
Search: Air's AI search is a real strength for many reviewers — searching text within images, recognizing faces, and using transcription to search video content without watching it. But it's not universal: several reviewers specifically flag that search and filtering "could be better" or don't extend into boards and sub-boards the way they'd expect. Focal's search works the same way across the whole library, powered by the same automatic tagging that organizes it.
Channel uploads: Focal uploads approved creative directly to Meta, TikTok and YouTube, with performance data connected back to the asset. Air has no equivalent — it doesn't appear in any of the 40+ reviews analyzed in detail for this page.
Creative review: Air's review tools are genuinely strong, especially for teams working natively inside Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects, where its integration is more mature than Focal's today. Focal's review happens in the same platform used for project management, tagging, briefing and performance reporting — one place instead of a separate review layer on top of asset storage.
The implementation of Focal led to significant improvements in both workflow and asset search efficiency: - Creative Output: Creative teams were able to double their output thanks to Focal’s streamlined workflows, allowing them to focus more on production and less on manual processes. - Time Savings: 50% reduction in overall time spent on asset management tasks, particularly due to the AI-powered search capabilities.
FAQ
Q: What is the difference between Focal and Air?
Air is a well-regarded, general-purpose creative operations DAM with genuinely strong AI search, review tools, and a clean interface — reviewers consistently praise its ease of use and organization. But that organization depends heavily on a team keeping it maintained: one reviewer put it plainly, Air "is only as helpful as I make it." Focal is built specifically for ad creative, with tagging and file naming applied automatically on upload, bulk actions across many assets at once, and direct upload to Meta, TikTok, and YouTube with performance data connected back to the asset — none of which Air offers natively. Air doesn't have extensive project management capabilities either which are natively built into Focal.
Q: Does Air work well for ad creative teams?
Many creative teams do use Air, and it's a genuine step up from a shared drive — reviewers describe strong AI search (including searching text within images) and clean, fast review tools. But it wasn't built around ad performance specifically. Across the roughly 40 reviews read for this page, not one mentioned uploading directly to an ad platform, and several reviewers described the naming and tracking work required to get assets from Air into a live ad as still largely manual.
Q: Does Air support bulk actions like mass tagging or moving multiple assets at once?
Not fully. This is one of the most consistent complaints in Air's own review data — 24 mentions of missing batch export and mass tagging in the aggregate summary alone. Reviewers describe having to tag or move assets one at a time: "I manually have to go through each asset and select 'move to...' and then select from a dropdown," as one Creator Coordinator put it. Focal applies tags and naming automatically on upload and supports bulk actions natively.
Q: Is Air's AI search and tagging good?
Genuinely, yes, for search. Reviewers consistently praise Air's ability to search text within images, recognize specific faces, and use transcription to search video content without watching it. Where it's weaker is tagging automation and organization at scale: mass tagging is a frequent complaint, and several reviewers describe workspaces becoming cluttered or hard to navigate once a team stops actively maintaining the structure. Focal applies your own custom taxonomy automatically to every asset on upload, so organization doesn't depend on ongoing manual upkeep.
Petteri Jalonen
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