Adobe and Omniture – Visions of the Future?

Today, I'm delighted to host a guest post by the CEO of EyeView, Oren Harnevo. Don't be shy about letting him know what you think. You can also follow him on Twitter @ohnevo. Take it away, Oren:

Last week Adobe declared that it will acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion. While some might not understand this bold move by Adobe, for me it makes a lot of sense. Adobe is entering the online market and is starting to use its elbows against companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. I think the future for OmnAdobe or AdobNiture is bright and here’s why.

It might not be what Adobe wants from Omniture but this is my vision of the future of OmnAdobe!

I see a future in which advertisers turn to agencies no longer for content, but for effective content. What do I mean by “effective content”? Content whose impact can be assessed, measured, optimized and which can deliver ROI. Advertisers want to pay for results, not for mere content, and that is exactly what a company with a range of content-creation products wants with an analytics company – content with results.

Today, the creation of online content is all about experience and aesthetic. The flash application developer and creative designer believe they know what to create and do the best they can. But what if we had a way, to measure how good their work really is? What if we could put a price tag on one designer’s work against another’s? What if we could show that one flash application averages 40 seconds of use and another application maintains its hold on users for more than a minute? We could actually measure which designer was more successful.

This is not so much a vision of the future as a reflection of our normal working day at EyeView - effective content, constantly measured and optimized to provide real ROI.

Imagine this (names are strictly fictitious):

1. Niky, a fictitious online retailer of socks, wants a new flash application that allows its users to see and play with different sock options before purchase. They believe it will boost sales.
2. Niky finds Ogilby, an online, performance-based content creator which does more than just creating content - Ogilby also promises effective content and ties payment to success.
3. Niky loves the Ogilby pitch and decides to sign. Why pay for regular content when someone is offering measurable content?
4. The design team at Ogilby open their Adobe applications, create some killer content and click the “Insert Analytics” button in the toolbar.
5. Niky now log into their OmnAdobe (or AdobNiture) analytics platform and watch how the content performs, how it impacts their traffic, their sales and their users.
6. It turns out that Ogilby improved engagement with the website by 30%. Ogilby earns a bonus for their work.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? It may still take a while for Adobe and Omniture to reach such lofty heights. These companies are different on so many levels that it would another five posts to describe. Adobe is a Software as a Product (SaaP) company while Omniture is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company with subscription-guaranteed revenue. Omniture usually sells to the very high end of the market while Adobe sells to all segments. Omniture is mostly US while Adobe is worldwide. There will be many challenges for them to face together before they provide the end-to-end solution that bundles content and analytics into the perfect package.

When content is measurable and advertisers demand this accountability from their agencies, Adobe may be the only provider in the market to meet that demand. When that happens, people may take another look at this acquisition and reconsider its value.