Sep

21

Adobe buys Omniture – what to make of it?

Filed Under Web Analytics News | 2 Comments

Last Wednesday, we found out how to make an onion and chocolate sandwich and were left to wonder how it could possibly taste good.  With Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture, you can tell that nobody quite gets this one: ADBE stock dipped just slightly, and OMTR hopped up to just under $22 a share, up from around $17 (quite a bump, but still adding up to less market cap than the purchase price, and neither of these responses is anything exciting).  So why did Adobe buy Omniture? Let’s take a look at the case.

Financial Reasons

One answer is obvious: now’s as good a time as any to buy Omniture.  They’ve scooped up tons of great companies and technology over the past few years (through acquisitions), have a tremendous client roster, and somehow have managed to be squarely in the red almost every year since going public. Adobe must feel like they can manage the business better than the mormons, and they’re buying at a good price.

If you’ve ever been to Omniture Summit or Omniture HQ in Orem, UT, you’ve no doubt realized that Omniture likes things that look cool.  They spend a lot on creative work (or have a lot of internal people to do it) because every piece of collateral you touch or presentation you see is filled to the gills with 3D images and fly-throughs that explain their products in more dimensions than you use them.  Omniture’s offices are pretty cool, too, but nothing crazy.  They’re just pretty cool. You’ll also notice that their employees are paid very, very, VERY well compared to standard Orem, Utah salaries, and that would be okay if their customer service wasn’t such an issue.  There are a lot of places for Adobe to step in and manage budgets, without a doubt.

Clients

Adobe has tons of clients.  Omniture has tons of clients.  They’re probably just about all the same clients…

Business Model

Adobe writes software.  Omniture writes software.  They both have talented programmers. Check.

Adobe distributes software in boxes and via downloads as client-side design tools, and bills by the product version.  Omniture delivers software as a service and lacks the server infrastructure to make the tool as responsive as it should be – and they bill by the byte. This expansion of infrastructure will equal major dollars out of Adobe’s pocket if they want the tool to feel as snappy as Google Analytics any time soon. Ding.

Adobe provides service over the phone or Internet if you have trouble with their software (which is usually your fault). It’s pretty simple.  Omniture provides service as a major component of their offering: the tool is incredibly complex, prone to installation error (not their fault), prone to misinterpretation (again, not their fault), and needs a lot of hand-holding. This service model has tiers: account managers for most accounts and engagement managers for big names and big-bucks (or big complainer) customers.  Ask any client of Omniture’s what their biggest complaint is. Definitely customer service: the tool is great, but support response time is just awful. Since Adobe has a completely different customer service model, bring out the wallet again! Ding!

The future of computing is definitely software as a service.  We have Google Docs, online email, calendars and task management, online photo editors, online design and layout software, and we’re expecting online versions of MS Office in the very near future.  So of course, Adobe will want to leverage Omniture’s experience developing online applications, and will definitely want to leverage analytics to improve the user experience over time.  No question, although it could be a while. Check.

The Internet, Analytics, etc.

Online marketing is a pie everyone wants a piece of, and integrating SearchCenter into SiteCatalyst was a big step in the right direction for Omniture.  While tools like SearchIgnite and Marin still probably capture more interest because of their power in an agency environment, SearchCenter does pretty well and represents a huge investment by Omniture.  An investment that has zero benefit to Adobe. Ding.

From a web analytics perspective, it’s a little perplexing until you consider Flash. Yeah, you have Dreamweaver, but that’s so obvious and such an easy cut & paste job that it’s not even worth mentioning (so forget that I did).  Getting Flash tracking to be built in without the designer having to do anything is a very big deal, but it won’t be easy to create those hooks.  Same thing with Flex/Air, etc. The internet is definitely going the way of the RIA, so an analytics tool that builds itself in is a huge boon.

The trick will be in how to do this.  With so much manual naming of page names, site sections, eVars, props, and on and on, these tools definitely aren’t going to do the work for you.  There will still have to be a significant amount of strategy developed around analytics, but perhaps with the bonus of not having to worry about tagging. From a time savings and data accuracy perspective, this could be a huge plus.

And comscore?

Now this is definitely worth getting excited about TODAY.  Want to know how your page views for yesterday stack up against the industry leaders? Want to know how your conversions stack up? What your traffic source breakdown is vs others? Want to be alerted when your competitor ups their paid search budget? Done. And right next to your data.  Very cool.

Hopefully we’ll hear something from these guys on their plans.  I’m definitely eager to understand the deal beyond fishing around in the bargain bin.

I’m still confused about…

I still just don’t get it.  There are too many places where there is no perceived benefit at all.  While there are definitely opportunities to stitch the online components together (creation software like Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.), there are too many places where each company will be speaking a different language.  SearchCenter, as I mentioned, will benefit Adobe zero.  Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom, and the majority of Premiere and After Effects will have nothing to do with Omniture.  The customer service and sales models are completely different.  And Adobe doesn’t stand to benefit from investment in server farms and increased bandwidth for years – until they develop their products as a service.

In other words, the venn diagram that describes synthesis here is just a thin sliver of overlap as far as I can tell, unless the benefits are much farther out than I’m seeing.

Sep

2

Let’s try a new approach, Part 1

Filed Under Web Analytics in Business | 4 Comments

Ever have one of those startling moments of clarity when you suddenly realize that everything – literally EVERYTHING – we’re trying isn’t working?  Ever had one of those moments last three years? Oh, me neither.  I was just asking.

Working BlindfoldedI think we need to realize that now is the time to take a step back and look at what we’re doing on the internet. What better time to worry a little less about the risk of putting a company on cruise control than when everything is out of our hands anyhow? Now, I’m not in any way advocating taking our eyes off the road; I’m just saying let’s just take our attention off of trying to work the pedals and control everything one piece at a time to reflect on what the hell is happening to us.

We’ve just gone through a long period of excess where every decision was right and newcomers to the stage were getting standing ovations.  And we know now that it was quickly followed by a stage where all of our mistakes came back to haunt us.  A quick drive through town shows us that: a lot of businesses with the lights out.

There are things I think we need to start thinking / worrying / crying about today.  And I mean TODAY.  Here are two of them, with more to come later.

1. Do the people I trust really know what they’re talking about? Are they holding that against me?

Your agencies.  Your employees.  Your neighbor who “fixed” your lawnmower.  Ever feel like every time you find expertise or help, everything goes to hell? There is a reason for it. There’s even a phrase for it.  You’re being bullshitted.

There are three types of internet professionals:

  1. People who genuinely know what they’re talking about and are arrogant, lazy jackasses because of it (“It will take 3 months to develop that software [while I play Freecell].“)
  2. People who are full of it (“We guarantee top position in Google.“)
  3. People who genuinely care (“We are on it. We will do everything we can to succeed.“)

In essence, you have competence alone (Usain Bolt), work ethic alone (Bernie Madoff), or a combination of the two (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Jesus).  How do you picture these different people in your mind? Can you see that some of your employees / agencies / neighbors strike a similar chord with you?  What category do they fall into?  We all hate both Usain and Bernie, and while we might grimace at a healthy ego in people like Steve Jobs and Tiger, they’ve earned it and we respect them for it.  And they’ll continue to earn it rather than resting on their accomplishments.

I used to work at an agency that doubled in size and earned its true stripes in the industry.  We celebrated the managing director of the office for facilitating this achievement, but everyone couldn’t stand this person because this person was faking their way through it and taking credit for some of my very talented colleagues’ hard work.  Sure, we doubled in size under this person’s watch.  But what would we have done if the role were filled by Warren Buffet? But this person was content with their success and felt that knowing what you’re doing isn’t necessary if you’re succeeding.

But success does not equal success.  A high school running back can set a school record, but never go to the NFL.  We have to all remember that we have a long way to go and a lot to learn.  We can rest after our 10th interview in Fortune Magazine.

Fire all of your Usains and Bernies. Today. And get feedback so you know who these people are.  Bernie Madoff scammed some of the smartest and most successful people in America.  Don’t be so egotistical as to think you aren’t being fooled, too. When you hire the next one (sometimes they’re hard to identify in interviews and you find out later), fire them once it becomes apparent. Period. You’re actually doing them a favor – this is the only way they will learn that change is necessary. Their egos flare every time they get away with their parlor tricks, so firing is the only way to teach.

2. Do I have an actual vision for my web site? Do I know the difference between goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics?

Generally, I reject this sort of corporate speak and feel like it puts us in a death spiral of executive blabber, but this part is important.  It’s how you plan and achieve.  If you don’t have a plan for your business, everything is an accident, both success and failure.

Goals, e.g., “Attract the most qualified users to the site and convert them with maximal efficiency.”

  • Measurable: NO.  Seriously. Get over it.
  • Scope: Large

Objectives, e.g., “Increase our web marketing ROI by 25% / Increase conversion rate by 10%.”

  • Measurable: YES. Woohoo!
  • Scope: Large

Strategies, e.g., “Understand the value of various traffic sources and optimize both spend and landing pages to increase conversion.”

  • Measurable: NO!
  • Scope: Small/Medium!  Strategies are NOT at the company/site level.  They are discrete to certain goals and objectives and qualitatively describe the methods employed to achieve.

Tactics, e.g., “Identify top 5 SEO landing pages and align copy with popular keywords being used. Remove extraneous form fields. Test ’sale’ creative in PPC ads. Conduct A/B test of the ‘Buy Now’ button color.”

  • Measurable: YES! Think of measurement as checkboxes with results: I did this and here’s what happened.
  • Scope: Small

By understanding what each one of these things are, we can write down what we want to achieve, how we want to achieve it, how we know whether we’ve achieved it, and how we know what helped / hurt us in achieving it. I can’t think of any better way to understand what the hell is going on.

Please, share some of your experiences!