Omniture and comScore team up to improve web data
Updated
Omniture and comScore just announced that they’re working together on a new product that combines the two companies’ online data and analytics services. They haven’t provided me with any details yet, but the team-up of these two big names could make a real splash.
The product ties together the data that the respective companies are best known for, they say — comScore’s numbers about the audience size for each website, and Omniture’s data about how visitors actually behave on a site. Together, the companies promise to give publishers a fuller picture of who is visiting a site and what they’re doing there.
It’s not just like slapping together comScore data with Omniture SiteCatalyst (its flagship software), either. The companies use different research methods: ComScore monitors a group of 2 million users and extrapolates from their behavior, while Omniture tracks the behavior of every visitor to specific website. A spokesperson tells me “the resulting dissimilar metrics often cause confusion and uncertainty in digital media planning and analysis,” so by (metaphorically) putting their heads together, the two companies could come up with more reliable information.
Even if the details are vague for now, the partnership seems to make sense. It might even spur speculation about whether the companies should take the alliance further, or even merge — except Omniture is already spoken for.
Update: The companies offer more details in the press release. Here are the basics:
Specifically designed to meet the unique demands of the digital advertising world, the offering will combine the power of Omniture’s Web analytics with comScore’s new Media Metrix 360 hybrid audience measurement to help provide publishers and advertisers with a unified and comprehensive view of online audiences.
Two of the keys to implementing a successful digital marketing initiative are the ability to measure and analyze online marketing performance and to capture accurate views of audience reach across multiple information sources. To date, publishers and advertisers use two primary sources for measuring the impact of digital advertising – Web analytics and panel-based audience measurement. Because the two measurement methodologies have disparate objectives and employ different data collection technologies, the resulting dissimilar metrics can cause confusion and uncertainty among publishers and advertisers. This strategic partner relationship blends these two methodologies in a highly automated way to create a unified approach for audience measurement designed to enable publishers to represent themselves in a more comprehensive manner to advertisers, and for advertisers to better optimize their media planning with the benefit of more extensive media reach data.
This relationship between Omniture and comScore will enable organizations to unify their online and panel-based audience measurement information, providing more consistent and more comprehensive standard metrics. With the combined offering, publishers and advertisers will be able to automate data integration and reconciliation, eliminate the need for publishers to implement time consuming multiple data collection methods and reduce the labor-intensive steps needed to deliver unified audience measurement.
[photo:flickr/ChrisL_AK]
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.