Why Did Adobe Buy Omniture?

The news of Omniture Acquisition by Adobe came as a big surprise to me. I was not surprised that Omniture got acquired just the fact the Adobe acquired them.

I always thought that Omniture would be a good fit for Oracle as an extension to their CRM tools. Adobe was not even on my radar as a company who could potentially acquire Omniture. I was also surprised at the valuation Omniture got. 1.86 billions for a company that is still in red and had 335.5 Million in sales in last 12 month (source: MSN Money) is way too much in my opinion.


So why did Adobe pay such a premium to acquire Omniture? What does it bring to Adobe? I am not entirely sure what Adobe has in mind. Following are the ways that I think Adobe might use Omniture:

• Measurement Ready Interactive Media – Flash, PDF, Adobe Air application will all come ready with Omniture tags for measurement and optimization.
• Self optimizing flash widgets/ads – Designers will be able to put all assets (copy, images, etc.) in a flash file/Adobe Air application and the application will automatically arrange them on the fly based on customer’s interest, intent, day part etc. This will be driven by both Site catalyst and Test&Target. However designers might have a hard time dealing with this concept.
• Self optimizing landing pages – Same as above but will be more on site. Flash on the landing page will change based on who the customer is.
• Self guiding PDF – Ability to modify/adjust the pdf content on the fly based on who the customer is, what have they done in past on site or with other content etc. Think about A/B testing or Targeting within a PDF document.
• PDF Tracking – Creators of pdf content will not only be able to see how many people downloaded a particular piece of content but they will also be
  
  • Find out about the circulation of the content. Did a person who downloaded the paper sent it to others?
  • Find out, how far did the reader go through the file?
  • Find out, if reader searched for something in the pdf? What were the keywords?
  • Tie the content analytics with site analytics to optimize and target the site side experience as well as arm the sales force with the information.
• Adobe products as SaaS- Omniture brings SaaS expertise to Adobe which adobe might be able to leverage to sell their products as SaaS.

Other Players in Web Analytics

Coremetrics and Webtrends are the only two large Web Analytics companies that are still independent. The whole industry is talking about when and who will acquire them.

I have long speculated that Webtrends will be acquired by Microsoft. I still believe that it is possible. Given that Microsoft and Adobe have a few competing products, why would MSFT continue to use Omniture on their web properties and provide that information to Adobe? Microsoft might decide to part ways with Omniture and once again seriously consider other options e.g. buy Webtrends.

Some of the other possible candidates to acquire Web Analytics companies are
AOL
IBM
Oracle
Cisco
APPLE
Big Interactive Agencies
Ad Networks

I think Webtrends will be acquired in less than a year, possibly in next 6 months. Coremetrics might remain independent for a while.

What do you think?


Few other blogs that you might want to read:

• Gary Angel on Adobe & Omniture Deal
• Eric Peterson on Adobe & Omniture Deal
• Alex Yoder, CEO Webtrends on Adobe and Omniture Deal
• Long Live Web Analytics
• Web Analytics Industry - Consolidation Continues
  

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Mobile Analytics

According to Nielsen Mobile the adoption of the mobile web has reached a critical mass. Nielsen says that, as of May 2008, 15.6 percent of mobile subscribers in the US make regular use of the mobile Internet on their devices, totaling some 40 million subscribers. This is just a subset of the 95 million US mobile subscribers who pay for access to the mobile Internet (through data plans or some other setup) but don't use it quite so regularly.

Despite such a surge in mobile internet usage business are lacking in measuring the mobile traffic. A recent survey by Omniture found that 71% of businesses are not measuring mobile traffic to their sites. It also found that 50 percent of businesses do not even know how many unique users landing on their sites originate from a mobile device.
Measuring Mobile internet traffic, also called “Mobile Analytics” is not easy, we are still dealing with the accuracy issues with web analytics and now Mobile analytics provides its own set of unique challenges.

Judah Philips in his post on Metrics insider covers a comprehensive list of challenges that Mobile Analytics faces.

Some of the key challenges he lists are

• Data Collection –JavaScript is the most common way of collecting data for web analytics, but not all the mobile browsers execute JavaScript.


• Unique visitor identification - due to lack of cookie support and the changing of IP addresses it is a challenge to uniquely identify a user.


• Traffic source detection - Determining the source of traffic, such as search, email, direct entry, RSS feeds, and marketing campaigns can be challenging in the mobile space.


• Geographic identification - Where are the visitors viewing your site coming from? But not all devices enable geographic detection because the gateway’s IP address is used, not a GPS signal.

Mobile Analytics Solutions

A lot of Mobile Analytics solutions have sprung up in past year or so and more are coming up (See my prediction for 2008). Some of the established web analytics vendors are also now offering Mobile Analytics solutions. These solutions widely differ in their technology, process and capabilities. Which solution will work for you will depend on your needs (In future I might compare some of these vendors on this blog, but meanwhile if you would like help in evaluating a solution you can email me at batraonline at gmail.com). Below is the list of current mobile analytics vendors that I am aware of.

• Admob


• Amethon


• Bango


• Coremetrics


• DeckStats


• mobileStats


• Mobilytics


• Motally


• Nedstat


• Omniture


• Tigtags


• XiTi

Other Resources you might be interested in

• The challenge of mobile analytics - Part 1


• The Challenge of Mobile Web Analytics


• Mobile Analytics: Omniture and Bango


• Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Advertising Revenue to Surpass $2.7 Billion in 2008

Did I miss any tool/solution? Email me at batraonline at gmail.com

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Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra
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Mobile Analytics: Omniture and Bango

Earlier this year I predicted a few developments in Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Space. One of them was the rise of Mobile Analytics.
Here is what I predicted:

Mobile Analytics – Mobile sites and mobile advertisings gain momentum. Mobile Analytics will be become a requirement to understand how the sites and advertising are performing. Currently you can either use log files, WAP gateway logs if you are one of the mobile carriers (this is what I did back in 2001 -2002) or services from Amethon. This year we will see more players in mobile Analytics. The reporting will become better than what has been offered to date.

Two recent press releases are proving that I was right in my prediction, one is from Bango and another from Omniture.

According to destinationCRM, a research has found that between 20 percent and 30 percent of overall Internet traffic is generated by mobile devices. In this article Matthew Langie, Omniture's senior director of product marketing said that the need for a mobile-analytics solution was clear: Clients were requesting this capability, and research alone has shown that consumers are readily using mobile phones, with subscriptions at 3.9 billion in 2008 and predicted to reach 5.6 billion by 2013. (Individuals, it's worth noting, may have multiple subscriptions.) A recent study by market research firm IDC predicted that 164.7 million smartphones will be shipped worldwide this year -- a figure expected to reach 363.2 million in 2012. Moreover, while 2007 saw 27 million phones with Wi-Fi capabilities, the service will reach 400 million by 2012.

According to a research by Bango, the most important feature requested by mobile site owners was “The daily/weekly/monthly number of unique visitors count”

However, capturing an accurate number of unique visitors is not easy in Mobile sites as not all of the mobile phones accept cookies and users share the same IP address (network address) and this IP also changes as users roam. The new offerings from both these providers claim to provide an accurate count of unique visitors. It remains to be seen how accurate they are. It is interesting that both of these providers announced their offering on the same day.

Bango

Bango unveiled new mobile site analysis capability to help website owners measure the value of mobile sites by accurately counting unique visitors browsing their site. This new capability in Bango Analytics, v3.0, complements existing campaign analysis functionality .
Bango uses a privacy protected Bango User ID to count and track unique visitors. The Bang User ID is compiled through sophisticated WAP gateway profiling, data from browser analysis, session information and network interactions. This unique user ID enables Bango to distinguish between new and repeat users and therefore precisely quantify the number of unique visitors.
Source : MarketWatch

Omniture

Omniture announced availability of Mobile Analytics in Site Catalyst version 14.1. According to an article on destinationCRM Omniture's effort to address the most common problems marketers face when tackling the mobile arena includes the following four features:

• In a partnership with mobile Internet advocate group dotMobi and its DeviceAtlas database, SiteCatalyst communicates with an extensive library of device profiles to accurately identify the mobile device accessing a Web page. This determines what video, audio, and text can be displayed, thereby giving marketers insight into what customers are using most frequently. Moreover, carrier identification gives marketers the ability to partner with carriers to set up other campaigns.


• Through the use of visitor identification technology such as cookies, subscriber identification, or header information, SiteCatalyst can identify a new visitor or a repeat visitor to deliver an experience akin to the traditional Internet.


• The solution aims to capture the right data from a variety of devices to garner insight about the page. Omniture's server places on each Web page a very small file that occupies a single pixel, allowing marketers to track the activity of the mobile device: where the user is clicking, what content is being downloaded, what video is being watched, etc.


• A geolocation component that recognizes where the site is being accessed from, thereby enabling Web publishers to deliver advertisements applicable to that location.

As I predicted earlier this year, Mobile Analytics will gain more momentum in the coming months and I will be writing more on this subject.

Thank you Sarah Dawson for helping me with this post.
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Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value

John Lovett from Jupiter Research released his new report titled Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value. In this report he analyzed the web analytics market and various vendors, and concluded:

The Web analytics feature race is largely over and we are left with Web Analytics providers competing on Price and Flexibility.

John provides great analysis and insights in this report but I do not fully agree with his conclusion that feature race is largely over. I believe that as new trends in web continue to emerge so is the need for new features. As Phil Kemelor, another great analyst, writes that audio and video are becoming an important part of the web, so there are clearly features needed to support their tracking. Other features currently missing are for Mobile Analytics. Mobile web is clearly gaining momentum and so is a need for Mobile Analytics. I am sure Product Managers of these tool providers are not ready to quit yet.

I do agree that most of the vendors are mostly competing on Price and Flexibility (post-data-capture segmentation, reporting on custom data elements etc.) at this time. (In my view, flexibility is also a feature though). However competing on price when there is still a lot of room for innovation and differentiation is a very myopic view by current web analytics vendor and will provide a way for someone to disrupt their business very quickly.

Satisfaction with the current tool

One of the surprising results in this report was that more than 69% of the web analytics clients have decided to stay with their current web analytics tool. This is a big change from the trend that we have seen in past. A lot of this has to do with education about web analytics tools, what they can do, how they operate and the fact that several most used features and reports are comparable in various tools.
72% of those 69% where completely satisfied with their current provider.
47% of the customer said that the biggest challenge they were trying to solve with Web Analytics tools was Vistor Segmentation. 47% also said that customer engagement was their biggest challenge.

And the Winner Is?

This report has a great 3 dimensional chart showing how different tool vendors rate in terms of business value, market suitability and breadth of company.
Omniture, Unica, and Coremetrics emerged as industry leaders for large enterprises while WebTrends, Google Analytics, IndexTools and Lyris HQ ClickTracks emerged as industry leader for small-to-midsize businesses along with the three listed for large enterprise customers.

It was surprising to see that WebTrends was not considered an enterprise tool anymore, though WebTrends was the only company to score 100% on availability of basic features. (Sidenote: A customer of ours is replacing Coremetrics and going with WebTrends).
Another surprising result was that Omniture was the overall winner even for small-to-midsize businesses.

You can get the complete report at http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/research:vision/79/id=100411


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Consumer Attitude towards Behavioral Targeting

A recent report titled Behavioral Targeting Attitudes:The Privacy Issue by eMarketer, explored consumers attitude towards online tracking and behavioral targeting. There was a similar study by TRUSTe in April. This report builds on that study and few other surveys and provides an analysis of the consumers attitude toward Behavioral Targeting.

The conclusion of this report was exactly what I have been advocating. According to the report

online marketers might do well to develop transparent methods of letting the audience know when and how their Web history data will be used, the benefits they can receive in exchange for allowing it to be used and a clear, easy opt-in mechanism for informed consent.

I shared similar views in my post titles 5 Step Process to Ease Privacy Concerns Regarding Behavioral Targeting.

The key question this report tackles are

• What will encourage people to accept more ad targeting?


• Are consumer privacy concerns a deal breaker for
  behavioral targeting?


• How much transparency will marketers need to allay
  consumer concerns?


• Are all methods of behavioral targeting data collection equal?


• Will the government limit how online companies can use
  consumer data?

Some of the highlights of this report are

1. Over 87% of the respondents to TRUSTe survey said that at least three quarter of the online ads are irrelevant


2. 41% of the users are more willing to pay attention to personalized advertising


3. 75% of internet users are interested in receiving personalized ads


4. 59% of the respondents to Harris Interactive Poll responded that they are not comfortable with ads or content targeted to their personal interests based on their internet usage

The above findings create an interesting dilemma for marketers. Consumers want relevant ads but are not comfortable with being tracked. However, it also provides an opportunity for Behavioral Targeting companies to step up and innovate new ways to provide relevant ads while easing the concern about tracking.

Marketers and privacy officer’s need to keep in mind that the negative attitude towards tracking and targeting is not limited to Behavioral Ad networks such as Tacoda and Revenue Science etc but it also applies to content targeting and on-site targeting provided by tools such as Test&Target by Omniture, Optimost/Interwoven etc.

You can get the full report at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006407

Comments?


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Long Live Web Analytics

Ian Thomas, the man behind Microsoft Gatineau is making some bold predictions about the future of web analytics in his post titles Web Analytics is Dead. Long Live Web Analytics blog. He made two predictions:

1. In three years there will be no Web Analytics vendors, but Web Analytics will be everywhere.
2. In five years, all Web Analytics software will be free.

It is a great post and I like the way he is thinking. However I do not agree with him, here is my reply to his predictions:

1. In three years there will be no Web Analytics vendor, but Web Analytics will be everywhere - I completely agree that Web Analytics will be everywhere in next few years. This is already happening, as he mentioned and provide several examples. However, I disagree that there will be no Web Analytics Vendor. Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Atlas, Doubleclick etc. will (or already do) provide web analytics as an add on to their products but there will still be a need for one web analytics product you can rely on to make strategic decisions. Can you imagine having 15 different web analytics solutions that all give you different numbers? There will still be a place for deeper and strategic web analytics tool. I agree that the functionality of web analytics tool will change and they will continue adding more products. They might not be known as web analytics vendor but web analytics will be a core product that they will provide. They will be providing more than web analytics and they are already moving in that direction.
   (Side note: I also agree that Omniture will buy an ad serving company, I made the same prediction last year . I also predicted that Oracle will get into Web Analytics, because I believed that web analytics will become essential part of marketing automation, Online advertising, CRM etc. and Oracle won’t want to be left behind. And actually about 10 days after making the prediction they did buy a company that has web analytics product).


2. In five year, all Web Analytics will be Free – There is no free lunch, we all know that. As John Levitt commented on his post, most of the tools that provide web analytics as an add-on product, provide very light analytics and reporting. Their web analytics offering is to support or enhance the value of their products and offerings, so that they can keep up with competition. There will still be a place for deeper and strategic web analytics and that will come for a price. Web Analytics maybe subsidized if you buy other products from a company like Omniture but it won’t be free (bundle discount).
   A lot things can change in less than 5 year, Omniture can start using the web analytics data collected on the sites to create an online advertising network (they have pixels everywhere, they can buy an ad serving company, use touchclarity and offermetics to deliverer right ad to the right person at the right time) and then I can see that they can provide free web analytics tool if you let them aggregate user behavior and do targeted advertising. (My suspicion is that Google will be doing that soon too).

What do you think?

Unnecessary Outcry over Adobe CS3 and Omniture Tracking

On Dec 26th a blog post on Uneasysilence.comshowed that when a user launches CS3 suite adobe calls a server on Omniture. According to the article
When you launch a CS3 application the application pings out to what looks like an IP address - and internal IP address: 192.168.112.2O7.

This created a lot of paranoia among Adobe users and led to a lot of blog posts and comments on these blog posts (Also see http://valleywag.com/338011/wear-tinfoil-hats-when-using-adobe-products). Everybody started talking about how evil adobe is and so on. It appears that we, Web Analytics community and online marketers, have a huge task of educating users about Web analytics tracking and quelling this kind of paranoia.

Finally one product manager from Adobe stepped up to clear all the confusion.

Adobe Product manager wrote a reply on Adbobe Blog. Here is what he wrote:
According to Doug Miller from the Adobe.com team, "Omniture is Adobe's web analytic vendor for Adobe.com. There are only 3 places we track things via Omniture anywhere in or around our products.":

• The welcome screens (these things) in some Adobe apps include a Flash SWF file that loads current news, special offers, etc. These requests hit Adobe.com servers and are logged, like regular browser-based traffic, by Omniture.


• Adobe Bridge embeds both the Opera browser and the Flash Player, both of which can be used to load Adobe-hosted content. These requests are also logged.


• Adobe apps can call various online resources (online help, user forums, etc.), and those requests are logged. [Update: To clarify, those contacts are made only if the user requests them--e.g. by choosing Help->Adobe Exchange.]

This, as far as I've been able to discover, is the extent of the nefarious "spying." If I learn anything else when more people get back on email, I'll update this post.

Let me start by saying that the kind of tracking Adobe appears to be doing is pretty harmless to you end users. Now let me ask a question to all these people, who became so paranoid about Adobe and Omniture Tracking. “Do you know that you are being tracked at a lot of places?” I am sure you have done one or more of the following

Connected to the internet – Do you know that ISP track of what you do online? You should read my blog post titled “ISP Based Behavioral Targeting.
Visited any site on the internet? - A lot of sites (and in fact they all should) track user behavior to create a better experience for users and to help them in their business goals.
Installed a toolbar – Do you know that their activity is being tracked by toolbars you install?
Used any social networking site where they volunteered all sorts of information.
Used a credit card. – Yes they have whole history of what you bought, when and where.
Bought a product on any major retail chain, used a credit card or a club card. – They keep track of what you buy, when and where too.

Since you are tracked everywhere, why is there a paranoia about being tracked by Adobe? Actually the kind of tracking Adobe is doing is not even close to the information you are giving away via other activities (some of them mentioned above). The kind of tracking adobe is doing is to understand the usage of their sites and provide a better experience for the users. The way I understand, Adobe is looking at user behavior at an aggregate level and not at an individual level, most of the companies doing web analytics do not look at individual user behavior. Most of the web analytics tools, like Omniture, use an anonymous cookie to track user behavior. This anonymous tracking usually looks at aggregated data for entire user base (or few segments) instead of an individual and hence do not invade your privacy.
So I request you to stop this paranoia about tracking by web analytics tools. They are helping you to have a better experience on the web.

Note: I am not associated with Adobe in any way. I have never worked for them in any capacity and do not know anybody personally at Adobe.

Comments?

2007 Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions Follow-up

In January of this year I made five predictions about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting for year 2007. Since the year is coming to an end, I feel it is time to do a recap of these predictions and see where I stand with these predictions. Let’s take a look at one prediction at a time.

1. Prediction: Web Analytics- A Great Career Field– There will be a lot more jobs in this field in 2007. A great year for those who are planning to enter this field or looking to move into better jobs in this field. Most marketing jobs will have web analytics as a requirement. Currently there are 1024 open job on Indeed.com but I expect this number to rise as there will lot more openings than qualified candidates.
   
   Follow-up – This was an easy one, I was hiring at that time (and currently too) and based on my discussion with various folks in the industry it was clear that more and more companies were starting to use Web Analytics and it was becoming difficult to find web analyst. When I made this prediction on January 3rd there were 1024 open “web analytics” positions listed on indeed.om, a job aggregating site. Since making this prediction I did a monthly follow-up on open jobs from Jan – Aug, you can find the last (Aug) follow-up at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/08/web-analytics-jobs-trend-aug-2007.html
   On Nov 20th there were 2045 open positions listed on indeed.com, 99.7% increase since I made this prediction in January. Open positions have been up every month and Oct was the highest month ever with 2085 open positions on Oct 1st. So with this I can say that my prediction number one has come true.
   If you are trying to get into web analytics field I recommend reading interviews I did with various web analysts in the field (Yes I am still doing these interviews, if you want to participate please email me at batraonline at gmail.com)



2. Prediction: Lot more new writers – There will a lot more bloggers and writers in this field. Can somebody count how many blogs on Web Analytics are currently? This will help me set the baseline.
   
   Follow-up - I don’t know how many total blogs on web analytics were there last year but know for sure that a lot of new blogs on web analytics have started since I made that prediction (If I can locate all the blogs then I will publish a list in near future). Three new books on Web Analytics were published this year. Web Analytics Books by Avinash Kaushik (Web Analytics: An Hour a Day ) and Jason Burby and Shane Atchison (Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions) were planned before I made my prediction so can’t take credit for those. Justin Cutroni also wrote a book on Google Analytics, a great resource and a must read for all those who are using Google Analytics.



3. Prediction: Web Analytics won’t be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 view of the customers. Integration of various data sources and tools will be expected from web analytics and other supporting tool vendors. Omniture started the trend with Omniture Genesis and this will continue we will see more acquisitions and partnerships similar to Omnitures.
   
   Follow-up – WebTrends had similar integrations, the latest one is with SilverPop, an email provider. Another example is WebTrends Marketing Lab integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide online marketers a consolidated, real-time view into both online visitor activity and offline customer information..
   Omniture’s acquisition of Offermetica and TouchClarity and integration with Salesforce is yet another step in this direction.
   I expect to see this trend continuing in the next year.
   (Also see my recap of this and following predictions.)



4. Prediction: Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won’t be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.
   
   Follow-up: Megan Burns of Forrester Research echoed the same thing in her Report: Web Analytics Market Pumped for Growth. She said “Many Web analytics companies started collecting data about Web site visits and providing reporting tools to analyze that data," "Now they're moving to the next level of value, which is enabling people to act on that data and becoming a platform for managing interactive marketing activities." (Also see the follow-up I did earlier this year).
   Acquisition of Offermetica (Optimization) and TouchClarity (Behavioral Targeting) by Omniture are strong testament of my above prediction. Marketers are demanding a seamless way to not only learn from data but also to take actions to improve site performance. Some web analytics experts are now calling this Web Analytics 2.0. Here is what Josh James CEO of Omniture had to say when they acquired Offermetica
   “The acquisition is a key part of Omniture’s strategy to deliver the most comprehensive solution for optimizing online business. Offermatica leverages Omniture’s recent acquisition of Touch Clarity as the two are highly complementary and together address the spectrum from A/B testing and multivariate testing to behavioral targeting. Offermatica enables companies to define and test the structure and elements of their sites, and Omniture TouchClarity™ enables companies to deliver the optimal content to any individual at any time….This combination, with Omniture’s analytics as the underlying foundation, provides the industry’s first and only integrated site optimization suite.”..A year ago it became very clear to us that our customers wanted to leverage their data through a range of testing and optimization tools. Once we acquired the leading behavioral targeting technology, our customers continued to validate our thinking that in addition to behavioral targeting, A/B testing and multivariate testing were distinct and critical components of their long-term online strategy. Combining these capabilities into a single, integrated offering, built on patented behavioral targeting and testing technology, answers the market need for a complete optimization solution,”


5. Prediction: Behavioral Targeting – Only few main behavioral network players will be left and some of the existing ones with poor networks will either go out of business or be sold. See my previous article on why size of network matter. Behavioral Targeting won’t exist in isolation. Web Analytics tool will have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. Also, on-site behavioral targeting will become very common.
   
   Follow-up: Several acquisitions happened in Behavioral Targeting since I made the above prediction. Recent acquisition of Tacoda by AOL and BlueLithium by yahoo proved me right. I think Revenue Science is next in line and will be sold in next few months.
   Also acquisition of Touch Clarity by Omniture proves that web analytics tools have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. It also proves my point that on-site behavioral targeting is becoming very common. (http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/09/convergence-of-web-analytics-and.html see my post titled Convergence of Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting.
   

Yes, I am 5/5 on my 2007 predictions.

What do I see next? I will be making my prediction soon, but this is what I see coming next

1. A tighter integration will happen between ad serving and Web Analytics. Maybe Omniture will buy an ad serving company.


2. Oracle gets into Web Analytics. Yes I think this is going to happen soon.(more on this later)


3. Google Analytics becomes a strong competitor in enterprise Web Analytics space.

Omniture, WebTrends and the Web Analytics Industry

Last week saw pretty big changes in Web Analytics Industry. Omniture bought one of it’s biggest competitor Visual Science and later in the week there was management shakeout at WebTrends.

"This has been one of the weirder weeks in Web analytics ever. One of the biggest publicly traded companies gets acquired, and another lets its executives go. Now I'm afraid to wake up tomorrow and find out what else might be going on," said Eric Peterson to ClickZ.

I agree, the changes in Web Analytics Industry happened so fast that you never know what might next. As I was writing this post I was worried that I will have to change the post by the time I finish it.

Omniture's purchase of Visual Sciences was the first big news of the week. It was great news for Visual Science investors and Omniture. Omniture bought one of their biggest competitors and further strengthened their position as a market leader in Web Analytics industry.
One of the beneficiaries of Omniture/Visual Sciences deal is going be WebTrends. Just like Omniture and other Web Analytics vendors, WebTrends will also have to compete in a market with one less competitor. Not everybody who would have gone with Visual Sciences will now go with OmnitureVisualScience.

I have found that there are generally 3 types of customer. One those who always like to go with number one vendor in the market, they will go with Omniture (and would have anyway) even though it might not give them everything they need for the price they need. There are those who make rational decision based on through due-diligence, they will choose Omniture, WebTrend or whatever tool makes most sense given their needs and budget. And then are those who will go with number 2 or number 3 just to make sure they don’t become prisoners of the market leader and make sure they don’t empower a company to become a monopoly. These customers will choose anybody but Omniture.

Recent changes at WebTrends however have caused some concern in the market. Blogger and Reporters in Web Analytics field have been speculating about what it means to WebTrends and Web Analytics industry. There are conflicting reports on if these changes are to put WebTrends on a path to be acquired in next few months or if they are to better prepare WebTrends to take on Omniture.

In my opinion, it will not be good for web analytics industry if Omniture also acquires WebTrends. As Sean Burton commented on my blog post blog post about WebTrends Management changes “I doubt that Omniture would be looking to buy WT at the junction, and it would be a crying shame if they did.

The competition between the two companies has driven the market forwards, and has resulted in numerous improvements for the end customer.”

WebTrends is a top competitor to Omniture today. As long as these two companies are competing there will be innovation, at least in near future. We certainly need more than one player in the market to continue innovation.

After coming back from WebTrends Engage Conference I came to the conclusion that WebTrends was on the right track with their new products and I expected them to give Omniture run for its money. At that time I did not even think about the management changes that just happened.

I am very impressed with Marketing Lab 2 and hope that WebTrends investors (Francisco Partners) don’t sell the company. If they do decide to sell then they should sell it someone who can keep the competition going on in this market. It is very critical for the growth of Omniture, the other tool vendors and this industry overall.

The sentiment at WebTrends is very positive and all the people I have talked to or heard from did not give any indication that the company is getting ready for a sale, on the contrary they are excited to move forward in this red hot web analytics market.

Here is one of the comments that an employee of WebTrends left on my blog:
“Wild speculation and facts on the ground are, it turns out, two very different things. I am employed @ WebTrends presently, and can tell you that the change in management is a viewed positively by employees. The partners could have sold the company, which is a net positive asset in anyone’s eyes (consider the brand, customers, product set, years of exp. developing solutions in the verticals, 2X growth since divestiture, etc, etc.). But they chose the strategic move, retrenching, which will require further investment but reflects a longer-term view. The interior culture had eroded badly due to the lack of strategically cohesive vision, employee engagement, unity among the functional business units, and execution in the channel. The surgery performed removes the chief architects of the disaster that was our management team. Certainly the partners could now cut staff levels to improve the marketability of the company in the hope of selling. Omniture would be an unlikely suitor given the VS buy (cash, FCC, etc. make their being the only enterprise vendor in the space unlikely). If the worst that happened is acquisition by a better funded SW behemoth as a stand alone business unit I don’t think you’d hear much opposition from employees, and it could radically improve WebTrends position. Change happens in SW. This is just another new day for a company that has grown accustomed to high-velocity change.”

Another former employee (recent) of WebTrends, also seemed very confident in Marketing Lab 2 (ML2) and WebTrends ability to take on Omniture.

One of the current employee said that Webtrends has seen YOY growth in last year and investors did not have to put any more money, which is a good sign but the growth is not what board was expecting based on how fast the industry is growing.
He also said that there is no plan for “fire sale” as a reporter from Portland Business Journal reported. The reporter could not contact the management of WebTrends and reported based on the speculation. He added that the WebTrends Visitor index and Scoring are getting good market traction. More than what WebTrends can currently handle. They have to do some more work on technical side and services to further improve WebTrends position in the market. He said we are rated number one in integration with other vendors such email, behavioral targeting etc. and board wants to continue use these strengths and take the company to next level.

Another senior employee of WebTrends said that these changes were welcome and somewhat expected by the senior team here. He said that the mood was very positive at WebTrends. He said that they know that they are number two in a very hot market, but also are the only sizeable player with new products, a big team in EMEA, partners in Asia Pac, etc., plus $80 million in revenue. According to him, it is okay to be number two, the underdog for once. He was enthusiastic about Webtrend’s new direction and said that they are ready to steal some market share from Omniture. He said “We’ve won some big deals from them recently, so why should we not take more?”

I wish Greg Drew and Jason Palmer good luck in their new ventures. I am sure they will continue to be a part of this growing industry. I also hope that WebTrends will continue to be a strong market force and provide the competitive landscape that this industry needs to keep innvovating.

Thoughts? Comments?

Management Shakeup at WebTrends

According to a news by Portland Business Journal CEO Greg Drew and three other executives at WebTrends Inc. have left the company. Details of their departure remain unclear.
The other executives that are missing from the list on the WebTrends site are Jason Palmer, vice president of product management; Tore Steen, vice president of business and corporate development; and Hamid Bahadori, vice president of product development and hosted operations.

Bruce T. Coleman, CEO of El Salto Advisors, a consulting firm that provides interim management to computer software and service companies is listed as the CEO of WebTrends.

According to the report, a number of former WebTrends employees believe that a quick sale of the company is imminent. They speculate that with its market share slipping, WebTrends management wanted to sell the company to its biggest rival, Omniture Inc., a publicly traded, $107 million company based in Orem, Utah.

Wow, this changes the whole web analytics landscape. Will Omniture buy WebTrends now? I believed that WebTrends was making a comeback and was ready to give Omniture a hard time but I guess I was wrong. Will Omniture buy them and coremetrics right now and just own the whole Web Analytics space?

Comments?

Convergence of Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting

In January of this year I predicted (A lot of my posts start with this sentence):
Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won’t be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.

Behavioral Targeting – … Behavioral Targeting won’t exist in isolation. Web Analytics tool will have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. Also, on-site behavioral targeting will become very common.

So why did I make these predictions?

Well first look at what Behavioral Targeting is and how it relates to web analytics.

Behavioral Targeting is targeting visitors based on their past behavior (on site). Past behavior could range from the very first action a visitor took on the site (if they still have that same cookie) to the most recent action that a user took (in the latest session). (More detailed information is available at Behavioral Targeting)

All these actions are tracked via web analytics data. Web analytics provides the intelligence for behavioral targeting and web analytics is what measures behavioral targeting success. Behavioral Targeting cannot exist in isolation.

Web Analytics provides insight into visitors’ behavior. But insights are only as good as the actions that come out of them. Behavioral Targeting is one of the (better) ways to make those insights actionable. Marketer segment visitors based on the insights provides by a web analytics data and on the business goals. These segments of visitors can then be to target customer with the right Ad/Message/Content/Product (Behavioral Targeting).

I guess Omniture thinks the way I do. The reason I say this is because they filed for a Behavioral Targeting patent and were granted the patent recently. According to a press release from omniture
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company a new United States Patent (U.S. Patent Number 7,260,551). The patent is generally directed to performance optimization, and relates to online real-time behavioral targeting and testing systems, such as content targeting on Web sites, targeted ad-serving to maximize cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) revenue yields, the maximization of yields from search engine marketing and improved personalization search algorithms.

So how will Omniture use this patent? I am sure they have already thought about it, but here are few of my speculations.

1. They can develop their own Behavioral Targeting Capabilities using Touch Clarity, not just on site but offsite as well.


2. License it to partners who develop behavioral targeting tools or networks that tie in with Omniture’s Web Analytics tool.


3. Get in behavioral Targeting Ad network game, just like digiMine did when they transformed into Revenue Science. I am not suggesting that Omniture should leave the Web Analytics field as they have a pretty good foothold in this field.

They can also make some extra cash by filing lawsuits against other companies that are infringing on their patent.

So what is next for Omniture? Acquisition of an ad serving company?

Thoughts? Comments?

Web Analytics is about taking actions

Earlier this year in my 2007 Predictions I wrote:

“Web Analytics won’t be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 view of the customers. Integration of various data sources and tools will be expected from web analytics and other supporting tool vendors. Omniture started the trend with Omniture Genesis and this will continue we will see more acquisitions and partnerships similar to Omnitures.

Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won’t be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.”

Proving me right once again, Omniture acquired Offermetica, a leading A/B testing and multivariate testing company.

According to the press release

“The acquisition is a key part of Omniture’s strategy to deliver the most comprehensive solution for optimizing online business. Offermatica leverages Omniture’s recent acquisition of Touch Clarity as the two are highly complementary and together address the spectrum from A/B testing and multivariate testing to behavioral targeting. Offermatica enables companies to define and test the structure and elements of their sites, and Omniture TouchClarity™ enables companies to deliver the optimal content to any individual at any time….This combination, with Omniture’s analytics as the underlying foundation, provides the industry’s first and only integrated site optimization suite.”

..A year ago it became very clear to us that our customers wanted to leverage their data through a range of testing and optimization tools. Once we acquired the leading behavioral targeting technology, our customers continued to validate our thinking that in addition to behavioral targeting, A/B testing and multivariate testing were distinct and critical components of their long-term online strategy. Combining these capabilities into a single, integrated offering, built on patented behavioral targeting and testing technology, answers the market need for a complete optimization solution,” said Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture.

I will also take this opportunity to announce that all my predictions for 2007 have come true. I will be doing a follow-up post pretty soon.

If you like this post, you might want to subscribe to my blog feed.Click here to subscribe to Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Online Advertising

Web Analytics Jobs Trend: Aug 2007

Here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on Aug 1st from Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Both of these sites are job aggregators that collect open job positions from individual company sites and from job boards such as HotJobs.com. SimplyHired.com also provides job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog. These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content. Not much has changed from the last month, the jobs remain at the same level as the last month.

Note: Month in the above graph represents the month when the data was gathered.A lot of job positions never are listed on any job board or company sites. These jobs are filled by networking and referrals. So if you are looking for a job and none of the listed jobs meet your passions float your name, let people in your networks and recruiters know what you are looking for and chances are you will find your dream job.


Which tool experience is in demand?
Again, not a big change from last month.

Open Job Positions on indeed.com and simplyhired.com for various web analytics tools.

3 month comparison of open job positions for various web analytics tools based on indeed.com data.

If you want to start a career in web analytics and don't know where to start, check out my article starting a career in Web Analytics and my Web Analyst interview series to see how others got started in web analytics.

Thank you to all of you who promoted and participated in the web analyst job surevy that I conducted last month. I will be publishing the results soon.

This will be the last monthly update on Job trends unless I see a big change. I might switch to quarterly update instead so stay tuned.

Web Analytics Jobs Trend: July 2007

Here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on July 1st. from Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Both of these sites are job aggregators that collect open job positions from individual company sites and from job boards such as HotJobs.com. SimplyHired.com also provides job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog. These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content.
Unlike last month, simplyhired.com is now listing more jobs than indeed.com. One likely reason is that all these job-a-matic jobs boards are getting more and more jobs listed on them and these boards are only tracked by simplyhired.


Note Month in the above graph represents the month when the data was gathered.

Indeed.com shows a big downwards trend in open jobs while simplyhired.com shows a slight upward tick. Web Analytics jobs listed on indeed.com are down 21% from last month. On Simplyhired.com open jobs are up 2.64% from last month.
“Web Analytics” jobs listed on indeed.com are up 54.79% from Jan 1st numbers. Since simplyhired now list more open jobs I might switch to reporting baseline with respect to numbers reported by simplyhired. I started tracking jobs listed on simplyhired.com from March onwards. Compared to March “web analytics” jobs listed on SimplyHired.com are up 49.82%.
A lot of job positions never are listed on any job board or company sites. These jobs are filled by networking and referrals. So if you are looking for a job and none of the listed jobs meet your passions float your name, let people in your networks and recruiters know what you are looking for and chances are you will find your dream job.

Which tool experience is in demand?


Open Job Positions on indeed.com and simplyhired.com for various web analytics tools.


3 month comparison of open job positions for various web analytics tools based on indeed.com data.

Key Findings

1. WebTrends and Omniture skills are equally in demand.


2. Open Jobs listed for almost all the tools, except Google Analytics, is down from last month.


3. Last month I wrote that I expected “Google Analytics” jobs to go up considering all the press coverage V2 of Google Analytics got. Voila!! this month’s data proves that I was right with my prediction. Jobs requiring “Google Analytics” skills are up 14% and 19% on indeed.com and simplyhired.com respectively.

I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised by Google Analytics capabilities. (one day I will write about my experiences with Google Analytics). If you are looking for help with Google Analytics please email me at batraonline at gmail.com.

Want to start a career in web analytics? Check out my article starting a career in Web Analytics and my Web Analyst interview series to see how others got started in web analytics.

I am conducting a survey to understand the salaries offered to Web Analysts (All levels). I will publish the results in future posts. Please take 2 mins to take the Web Analysts Salary survey.

Cookie versus Panel Based User Counting

comScore released the results of a study they did which claimed that cookie based measurement overstate Unique Users by as much as 150%.

I was not surprised by the results, not because I knew that cookies was over estimating because this is what I would have expected based on who was sponsoring the study. Since the study was conducted by comScore I wouldn't have expected them to come up saying panel data is worse than cookies based counting. If this study were done by Omniture or WebTrends we would have probably heard a different story. For example, if we were to compare wine and coffee and see which one is bad for health, wine company’s research will say wine is good for health while coffee is not. Coffee company will come with their research which will say coffee is good and wine is bad.

It is very likely that the users who participated in the study knew that they were being tracked (and they participated to get freebies) so they developed a tendency to clear cookies and hence skewed the results. There could be several reasons why comScore survey might be correct or not but comScore did not publish those so we can’t say for sure if panel based is really better than cookie based count.

It is likely that comScore is trying to solidify its position as a standard in audience calculation by releasing this study. In my article on Google and Behavioral Targeting I mentioned that Google is putting it’s cookie everywhere and could potentially get in the business that comScore is in currently (measuring audience size). This possibly could be a preemptive move by comScore. Don’t know for sure since I don’t have the details on how this study was done.

The crux of the matter is that no matter what system you use you will never get an accurate count of UU's. Even pages views are reported differently by different systems. Two panel based systems don't report the same numbers and two web analytics tool do not report the same number. To assume one system is not accurate or is better than other system is jumping to conclusions without basis. Both systems have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For individual site owners you need to pick one system, cookie based or panel based, and stick with it and accept the numbers. How does it matter if I told you that you actually get 3,000 users (or visits) and not 5000? What will change? What will you do differently? Have you ever moved from one web analytics system to another? You know they don't report same numbers. Say, your new system reports lower number than your old system than what are you going to do? Which one is correct, old or new? It is about trending and growth. You will probably use same growth and retention strategies no matter what the number is. If you goal is to increase the visitors by X% no matter what visitor count you use you will try to do X% of your current system weather that is cookie based or panel based.

If you are trying to compare sites then do the same thing, choose one system for comparison and stick with it. The same goes with advertising, if you are buying or selling ad inventory based on Unique Visitor count both buyer and seller will have to settle for one system and stick to stick to it.

However, one thing that surprised me in this study was a quote from Tacoda. Their whole business (Behavioral Targeting) is dependent on cookies and now they will validate with panel data because....(...they don't believe the size of their segment? Does that mean they will adjust the reach they claim they have?) Can someone from Tacoda please help me understand it?

Web Analytics Jobs Trend Update: April 2007

To followup on my predictions here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on April 1st.


Starting this month, I chose to include simplyhired.com. They are also a job aggregator site like indeed.com but they also provide job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog.
These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content. Indeed.com have more jobs listed than simply hired, not sure if indeed.com is aggregating all these jobs on job-a-matic job boards or not.


After dipping about 10.87% in March, open jobs listed on April 1st were up 8.33% on indeed.com and up 20.34% on simply hired. “Web Analytics” jobs listed on indeed.com are up 61% from Jan 1st numbers. It is still a very hot market for “Web Analytics” jobs.

Overall job postings containing “web analytics” as a percentage of all the open jobs positions listed on indeed.com is shown below.



To see which tools are in demand, I did some search on tool related job openings and found the Omniture was in lead closely followed by WebTrends.

Omniture Web Analytics Competition & BYU

Maybe this is old news to some of you but it is new to me. I came across BYU’s eBusiness Center site and found out that Omniture and BYU’s eBusiness center have teamed up to present a Web Analytics Competition.

I have seen several SEO competitions in past but this (to my knowledge) is the first Web Analytics Competition. A while ago there was a discussion on yahoo web analytics group regarding starting something like this. Maybe Omniture got this inspiration from that discussion or maybe that discussion started because somebody already knew about this competition. Whatever it was, I think this is a very smart move by Omniture. This is a win-win situation for Students, BYU, Omniture and the Web Analytics industry.

So what does it give each of those involved (directly or indirectly)?

• Students: They get to learn about web analytics and maybe win prizes too. Even if they don’t win prizes it let’s them learn something for free and prepare themselves for the future jobs in Web Analytics and Online Marketing.
  


• BYU: Brings their name as a pioneer in presenting first of it’s kind competition and also provides a new job field to its students.
  


• Omniture: Omniture has several advantages
  
  • Helps them enhance their brand as an industry leader by organizing first of its kind competition.
  
  
  • Helps them find the right talent.
  
  
  • It is a great way to generate Brand Awareness and also let these students test out the tool. A lot these students will need to make investment in Web Analytics tools in near future, when they enter the corporate world. This competition will position Omniture as a tool choice since they would have already played with it.
  
  
  • Gets direct feedback from these students to improve their product offering?
  
  
  • Maybe get paid for the services from the client, whose website these students will be analyzing. Something similar was done last year by several companies who had MBA students work on real problems (It was in Business 2.0 a while ago, don’t remember which edition)
  
  
  
  
• Web Analytics Industry: This competition will generates awareness about Web Analytics among students and help provide new talent for this industry.
  

I expect to see more web analytics vendors, service providers and schools presenting these kinds of competitions. What do you think?

Omniture Acquires Touch Clarity and WebTrends Announces Partner Integration

Yesterday Omniture announced that it will acquire Touch Clarity, a Behavioral Targeting Company. Within few minutes a WebTrends announced partner integrations with leading digital marketing vendors, including email marketing firms ExactTarget, Responsys and Silverpop; on-site behavioral targeting firms Kefta and Touch Clarity; and consumer opinion and customer voice firms ForeSee Results and OpinionLab.

This promoted me to write this article because this is exactly what I predicted.

You can read the fill press release at
• Omniture Acquires Behavioral Targeting Company Touch Clarity
• WebTrends Announces Marketing Lab Partners to Deliver More Measurable, Automated Relationship Marketing

Anybody who read my predictions for 2007 (http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-predictions-for-2007.html) might have already seen this coming.

Here were my 3 predictions for 2007, and this acquisition proves all 3 of them true. My new comments are in Bold

1. Web Analytics won't be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 degree view of the customers. Integration of various data sources and tools will be expected from web analytics and other supporting tool vendors. Omniture started the trend with Omniture Genesis, and this will continue, we will see more acquisitions and partnerships similar to Omnitures.

- Both the above press releases confirm that this prediction has come true. Customers are demanding this stronger integration. I wrote a follow-up on this same predictions last week, you can read it here http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/follow-up-on-my-web-analytics.html

2. Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won't be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.

- Omniture acquisition of Touch Clarity, a Behavioral Targeting company confirms this prediction has come true too. WebTrends announcing partner integration with Kefta (Optimization and Behavioral Targeting) and Touch Clarity (Behavioral Targeting) confirms that marketers are demanding Optimization and Behavioral Targeting. It is not just about reporting, it is about taking actions. In near future I am expecting to see a lot of case studies about what actions customers took and how it affected their bottom line.

3. Behavioral Targeting – Only few main behavioral network players will be left and some of the existing ones with poor networks will either go out of business or be sold. See my previous article on why size of network matter. Behavioral Targeting won't exist in isolation. Web Analytics tool will have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. Also, on-site behavioral targeting will become very common.

- Part of this prediction has come true. I have yet to see any consolidation in behavioral network players. But as the above two press releases confirm “On-Site Behavioral Targeting” is becoming common.

Web Analytics is maturing. Gone are the days when marketers were just satisfied by learning like
“Traffic went up”, “Traffic went down” etc. It is about deeper understanding of the visitors behavior (Web Analytics), segmenting them (Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting), taking actions based on this deeper understanding e.g. targeting relevant content, products etc. (Email, Behavioral Targeting, Optimization).


So I am 2.5 on my 3 predictions. I have already declared 1 more prediction come true (http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/follow-up-on-my-web-analytics_09.html). So for the year I am 3.5/5 so far and the year has just started. I feel good about my predictions.

Questions, Comments???

Omniture makes the right move With Omniture Genesis

Omniture has partnered with various companies in the industry to take web analytics to next level. These partnerships will allow Omniture’s customers to easily integrate different marketing applications and truly help them move toward actionable web analytics. Visit Omniture.com to download whitepapers.
One of the short coming of Web Analytics tools (and various marketing applications) is their inability to provide a complete view of all their marketing efforts and provide a way to take actions on their visitor’s behavioral data and help optimize user’s experience. To get a 360 view of your visitors you had to do a lot plumbing and even that did not provide you the full view as each system provided different numbers for same data points. This plug-and-play interface promises that marketers will be able to easily integrate between marketing applications.

I expect to see other web analytics tool providers either getting into similar partnerships or making some acquisition. This is the future of Web Analytics. Web Analytics is not complete if you can’t fully understand various factors that drive traffic, understand what visitors do when they arrive on the site, segment these users based on their behaviors, demographics etc and then take action i.e. provide content, products and experience that is relevant for your segments. These partnerships will allow marketers to get closer to 1:1 marketing.

This is a good start, now we will have to wait and see how Omniture delivers on this promise. I would love to hear your views and experiences.