Omniture and comScore, two of the biggest names in Web analytics, announced last night they will be combining forces to create a unique product that will make better use of each other’s data.
Realizing that their results on the same samples often conflicted, the two companies have resolved to release a revised digital audience measurement system, which will take the best each company has to offer.
While comScore researches behavior by monitoring Internet use of 2 million users, Omniture takes a pretty different approach, tracking the exact behavior of every visitor to some specific Web site. Whenever it comes down to comparing or compounding analyses derived from the two companies’ different approaches, “the resulting dissimilar metrics often cause confusion and uncertainty in digital media planning and analysis,” according to one spokesperson.
In general, it appears that Omniture will be providing the more specific technical data, like what devices are used to access certain sites and to monitor the kind of behavior once engaged into that site. On the other hand, comScore, tied to a particular group of users, will provide information on demographics, as well as cross-Web site interaction (something that Omniture is incapable of identifying).
Once more details on how exactly the companies will be merging their data pools together—or better yet, once the first data set is released—then we will know exactly how innovative this partnership really is.
Just last week, Adobe revealed that it is buying Omniture for nearly $1.8 billion, a costly purchase representative of a new ambitious business plan in which Adobe sees itself increasing its own value by augmenting its creative suite with Omniture’s analytics technology.
Since Omniture will soon be a business unit within Adobe, the new parent company may very well benefit from Omniture’s union with comScore. That is, if the union of their respective data sets proves as groundbreaking as they’d like us to believe.
