Omniture Aquisition Will Bring A Boost To Online Ad Measurement

Yesterday Adobe announced its intentions to acquire Web Analytics giant Omniture in a $1.8 billion deal.  The aquisition has significant implications for the future of online marketing; my colleague John Lovett spells out Forrester's take on what this acquisition means for customer intelligence professionals, customer experience professionals and interactive marketers in his blog post.  Here's Forrester's take:

[Posted by John Lovett]

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Adobe announced today its intention to acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion dollars. Many industry insiders and practitioners alike are asking why this deal makes sense. Here is Forrester’s take on what it means:

• Measurement becomes embedded within Interactive media. This acquisition has the potential to embed measurement technologies into a burgeoning landscape of interactive media. Adobe’s content creation tools are widespread and this acquisition now provides the opportunity for both developers and content creators to use a measurement tool that is inherent to the development platform.

• Web content management solutions have a new challenger. Adobe has a strong workflow and process management background that is typically disjointed from the online optimization efforts. Bringing these companies together creates the potential for enabling native tagging during content creation; coupled with run time delivery; followed by optimization tactics for continuous improvement.      

• Advertising and onsite measurement potentially share a roof. Advertisers and publishers use disparate tools to measure and reconcile visitors and impressions. Publishers need help monetizing content by understanding how it is consumed by visitors; while advertisers struggle to place relevant as in front of a targeted audience. If these two entities begin to share a common platform for measurement, then analysis and optimization align.  

• Adobe gains a recurring revenue stream. The revenue models for these organizations are different. Adobe largely sells licensed software, which was down 30% this quarter and hurting from the current economy. While Omniture delivers software as a service, thus Adobe gains a SaaS based recurring revenue model.  

We welcome your comments and thoughts on this acquisition news and how it affects Customer Intelligence professionals. Please look for a much more detailed analysis in our syndicated research coming soon.