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???

Follow-up on my Web Analytics Predictions for 2007 Part I

In January I wrote my web analytics predictions for 2007. Two of my predictions were

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.
Today I read an article Report: Web Analytics Market Pumped for Growth which hits on the same points that I predicted.
Here are two quotes from this article
“Many Web analytics companies started collecting data about Web site visits and providing reporting tools to analyze that data,” Megan Burns, Forrester Research senior analyst told CRM Buyer. “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.” This is exactly what I predicted “ Wen analytics won’t be standing alone and it will be all about taking actions on the data.
Here is another quote from Jason Palmer of WebTrends
“As an application category, Web analytics is evolving beyond data collection and reporting, claimed WebTrends’ Jason Palmer. “Traditionally, Web analytics has been about performance management, tracking Web site behavior and usage,” he said. “Four or five years ago, it began evolving into campaign reporting and most recently, campaign management and optimization.””
It is nice to see the validation by industry experts and leaders. The year has just begun I am sure by end of this year we will see similar quotes from a lot of industry leader and experts. I would like to declare that my prediction number 4 has already come true and number 3 is on its way to become true.

As always, I would love to hear your comments and feedback.