SEO Wolf

Adobe Acquires Omniture: What Next?

Ever since Adobe Systems published a Press Release announcing the acquisition of Web Analytics firm Omniture, the Internet has been buzzing over the news. Some argue that the venture is going to benefit the end-user, who will now experience the best of both worlds, while others fatalistically prophesize the end of Omniture. However, the predictions are largely positive and it is pretty evident that recession-struck Adobe will not have spent $1,8 bln – Adobe’ biggest acquisition since the $3,4 bln purchase of Macromedia in 2005 – on a well-established Web Metrics company just to raze it to the ground.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) is a San Jose-based computer software giant, focusing on developing creativity and multimedia software products and, more recently, RIA frameworks. Adobe’s potential reach is inestimable, as more than 80% of online videos are being enabled by Adobe Flash technology, while their flagship product, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard image editing program.

Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR) is a leading provider of Web Metrics software and online business optimization solutions, operating in over 20 countries worldwide, reaching over 5000 clients worldwide – among these we count eBay, AOL, Microsoft, Oracle, HP et al. – and hitting a market cap of $1,29 bln.

Paul Weiskopf, Adobe Senior Vice President

The main idea of the acquisition, as Adobe Senior Vice President Paul Weiskopf said, is to offer customers the tools necessary to optimize the Web content they create. Poetically emphasizing the venture, Weiskopf stated “We’re combining art with science. We’ve streamlined the process for creating and delivering content and now we’re offering the ability to put it in front of the right user at the right time to get the optimized business result.” But on a more down-to-earth note, Adobe may have finally found a way to go beyond the established model of traditional software sales and to profit from already installed clients. Adobe is a leading provider for various multimedia software solutions, like the video-enabling Flash system, the award-winning graphics editing program Photoshop and the Illustrator authoring tool. On the other side, Omniture is best known for its flagship Web Analytics platform, SiteCatalyst, but also for a host of products and services, including data behavioural targeting solutions (Test & Target) and PPC campaign optimization assistance (SearchCenter). Now imagine these two market giants collaborating to develop data mining and Web Metrics applications for multimedia content. This move would probably prompt Adobe onto the Analytics market and grant the company a monopoly over RIA metrics management, as both software development and data tracking would be done in-house.

For Web Developers and Designers, this power move could mean a giant step forward, as they would now be able to track the success of their multimedia and video creations. But Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture is even tastier for Internet Marketers, as it could herald the evolution of Web Metrics management, through the emergence of a revolutionary Analytics system, that would, most probably, dwarf YouTube’s maturing reporting product, YouTube Insight. With Google’s continuing efforts to better their Flash indexing algorithm, the advent of an advanced SWF data tracking technology could not only expand the horizons for website development, but also reform the world of Web Marketing. Furthermore, taking into consideration Adobe’s large palette of products, one can not help but dream about tracking the success of a viral video campaign, statistically analyzing the popularity of online distributed ebooks, assess the achievements of Advergaming campaigns… the possibilities are endless.

Whether or not Adobe will be able to cash in on this titanic opportunity remains to be seen. From my point of view, the greatest challenge this new enterprise will have to face is Adobe’s traditional stiff corporate culture towards user experience and its salient paranoia regarding security and copyright issues.

Tell the world about this post: