Urchin, WebTrends & What it Means for Web Analytics
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Written By Reprise Media | March 29, 2005 | Share This
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Two major events rocked the web analytics world yesterday: the Google acquisition of Urchin Software and the acquisition of WebTrends by the technology-focused private equity fund, Francisco Partners, for approximately $94 million in cash.
While everyone in the Web Analytics Forum has been abuzz regarding the implications of a $50 billion search behemoth’s entry into their […]
Two major events rocked the web analytics world yesterday: the Google acquisition of Urchin Software and the acquisition of WebTrends by the technology-focused private equity fund, Francisco Partners, for approximately $94 million in cash.
While everyone in the Web Analytics Forum has been abuzz regarding the implications of a $50 billion search behemoth’s entry into their space as well as the awakening of a Web analytics giant, it’s important to take a step back. First, to understand that we’ve been here before. And second, to take a look at the underlying drivers…
While it’s fairly uncommon to see two major industry events occur on the same day, the fragmented web analytics industry has experienced several acquisition events post Internet Bubble - from the SPSS acquisition of Net Genesis in November 2001 to the acquisitions of Insight First by 24/7 Real Media and Keylime Software by Overture during the same week of January 2003. During this spate of industry consolidation, we also saw DoubleClick enter the competitive Web analytics space in June 2002 and leave abruptly 2 years later in 2004.
While these events made the news, there were many other firms that left the Web Analytics market as quickly as they entered, with the survivors recently forming the Web Analytics Association to unite and promote web analytics. Check out InfoWorld’s latest
Web Analytics round up, where WebSideStory Earns the Top Score.
Why is it important to reflect on these past events and results? The answer is pretty simple: the same drivers behind most of these events are the same drivers that move the world of Web 2.0, the analytics behind visitor behavior and the intersection of those data points to provide richer context. In Web 1.0, the goal was to marry Web site behavior to Web advertising networks in order to provide context for why people clicked and converted. This goal was unfortunately never truly realized. However, in Web 2.0, the same goal of understanding visitor behavior is now being applied to search advertising networks.
With Microsoft’s recent adCenter announcement of their PPC network with enhanced demographic target data, Yahoo’s intentions to move up the food chain to attract traditional Madison Avenue types, and Google’s Urchin Software acquisition “to woo larger advertisers, which have been slower to employ search-related ads,” we’re once again attempting to demystify Interactive Marketing, moving beyond the clicks to audience management profiles and metrics common to traditional advertisers.
However, this time around, the competitive environment is much richer and the options are more diverse. On one hand you have the search engines attempting to move down the food chain by providing enhanced analytics. On the other hand, Web Analytics providers such as WebSideStory and Omniture will move to increase their customer’s wallet share and move up the food chain by providing bid management alongside their Web Analytics offering.
With so many options, what’s a company to do? The answer was posted way back in January on SearchViews questioning whether utilizing engine provided conversion tracking is a bad idea.
That answer was No, it’s not a bad idea if you’d like to the search engines to have visibility into the effectiveness of your keyword buys, opening up the possibility that they will consciously inflate their rates or recommend your most successful words to your competitor in an attempt to spark small-scale bidding wars.
If these possibilities do not sound appealing, then the answer on whether engine-provided conversion tracking is a bad idea is a definitive YES!
While Google hasn’t provided any ideas on how they will specifically introduce Urchin Software to their customer base, many have speculated that it might offer some basic services for free or offer enhanced tools, such as Overture’s Search Optimizer for an additional fee.
Just remember, the next time someone offers you engine provided conversion tracking, do what Nancy Reagan told Arnold on that ‘very special episode’ of Diff’rent Strokes - Just Say No!
Prashant Desai, Director, Product Management
Reprise Media
Topics: Web Analytics |
So will Google use this newfound insight to campaign-specific performance data to spark small-scale bidding wars? Their response will be no, but they will use that information to reprice their products (namely the search to contextual discount, and rank-specific bid discounts). Which would empower them to resist partitioning bid markets. Either way, one thing’s for certain and that’s that they will be looking at their clients’ performance data. So abuse or not, the privacy concern remains.
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