Web Analytics

[Steve Bennett]

Adobe to buy Omniture for US$1.8 billion

The deal will inject Web analytics technology into Adobe's content creation tools

Elizabeth Montalbano (IDG News Service) 16/09/2009 06:00:00

Adobe has agreed to buy Web analytics company Omniture for US$1.8 billion in cash, the companies said Tuesday.

The price San Jose, California-based Adobe is paying for the company, which is $21.50 per share, is at a 45 percent premium over Omniture's average closing price for the last 30 trading days, Adobe said.

On a conference call Thursday, executives wouldn't say if there was a bidding war with other companies to buy Omniture.

Adobe, known for multimedia design, Web-development and document-creation software such as Flash, Dreamweaver and Acrobat, said the purchase will help the company add Web analytics and optimization capabilities directly to those products.

This kind of ability to measure what kinds of media, Web applications or Web pages are popular with users is becoming essential as more and more business is being done on the Web, particularly in the area of online advertising, said Forrester senior analyst John Lovett. He said a recent Forrester study found that 73 percent of companies doing business on the Web had some kind of analytics technology in place.

"It's a ubiquitous technology that is in high demand at companies that are placing any parts of their business online," he said.

For designers, developers and online marketers using its tools, this new capability will help them streamline how they create and deliver relevant content and applications, Adobe said.

Advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and online retailers can improve the experience of their end users and get more out of their digital media through the new analytical capability, the company said.

On a conference call Tuesday, Adobe CEO and President Shantanu Narayen said that the idea for a merger grew out of conversations with Omniture's CEO, Josh James, and with customers who wanted more out of the digital media they were creating using Adobe's products.

For example, Narayen said people were using Flash to create online advertisements, but wanted a way to better understand click-through rates so they could see which ones were working. They thought there might be a way for Adobe to build that into their products, and "a number actually wanted us to integrate with solutions like Omniture," he said.

Similarly, Adobe, too, found it wanted more information from the ads and digital media it was putting up on its own site. Omniture had been an Adobe partner for some time, and in conversations with James, Narayen said the two realized their companies had "the same vision" for how digital media and rich Internet applications could include Web analytics and optimization technology.

Forrester's Lovett said the deal will put Adobe a step ahead of other companies creating tools for developing digital content.

"The combination of these two technologies makes sense -- it's the creative meeting the measurement side of things," he said. The deal creates a "big opportunity" to allow content creators to potentially measure the impact of everything they do, Lovett added.

Following the close of the deal, Omniture will become a new unit within Adobe, the company said. Omniture's CEO James will join Adobe as senior vice president in charge of that business unit, reporting to Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen.

The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of Adobe's fiscal year, which ends Nov. 27.

[admin]

iTWire, by Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 06 October 2009

Companies that invest in web analytics can increase online conversion rates, but only if they can avoid drowning in the vast amount of customer data that many have to deal with, according to a new market study.

The findings of the study by the Aberdeen Group are backed by UK web analytics and business intelligence provider, Site Intellligence, which says that companies can potentially increase online conversion rates from two percent to seven percent. The research also highlighted the fact that 76 percent of companies improved year-on-year conversion rates, with on average, conversion and revenue per visit increasing by three percent each year and customer profitability increasing by four percent.

The commercial director for Site Intelligence - which recently launched in Australia - David Pool, says a key challenge for businesses is to ensure the right information reaches the right segment of business “so they can put in strong action plans to improve sales and profitability.”

According to Pool, the Aberdeen research revealed that the current economic downturn has forced companies to place an even larger emphasis on the ability to attract, retain, and convert online customers.

In fact, Aberdeen says that 79 percent of 203 survey respondents indicated that the current economic climate plays a prominent role in their company's decision to attain better consumer insights from the online channel.

David Pool says that despite the acknowledgment that the online channel is a cost-effective method of understanding consumer wants and needs, businesses are challenged to derive actionable information from online data.

Pool says web analytics solutions can have organizations swimming in vast amounts of customer data overnight, but that the real question is “how much of this customer data is used to make actionable, timely decisions to improve the customer experience and maximize marketing effectiveness?"


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Back in April 2007, research by Aberdeen showed that 89 percent of best-in-class companies used, or planned to use, web analytics solutions as a method to measure corporate goals, such as improving the customer experience.

However, in its September 2009 report, Aberdeen found that 28 percent of these top performing companies admitted that the data delivered by a web analytics solution was difficult to interpret, with 22 percent of best-in-class companies still struggling to derive actionable insights from analytics data two years later.

Aberdeen says that, as a result, an increasing number of respondents are engaging vendors with strong professional service offerings despite having access to ‘freemium’ solutions that provide data but “little direction on how to maximize the use of the data for better business
decisions.”

The research firm says that in times of economic turmoil, companies cannot afford to be plagued with “information overload” in their attempt to better understand the wants and needs of their customers.

Other findings from the report show that best-in-class companies share common characteristics, such as 69 percent have a process for disseminating online data to key personnel in the organisation and 68 percent have defined performance metrics to measure online success.