Web Analytics vendors evolution
by Kevin Dooley
I received some comments to the Wisdom of the WA Crowd Experiment Results regarding some of the vendors positioning and value proposition. I started writing the answer but I systematically failed to keep it short so finally I decided to make it a post:
Looking back 2-3 years ago to the current main vendors of the WA market we had:
Omniture, HBX and Coremetrics were in a very similar position. Maybe HBX had a slightly bigger customer base and Coremetrics to some extent a better solution feature-wise.
At that time Coremetrics had recently acquired IBM’s web analytics division inheriting most of websphere’s ecommerce and content portals, this was a great opportunity to position themselves as the best ecommerce-breed web analytics solution, which they missed.
HBX acquired VisualScience which was by far the elite-exclusive-expensive Web Analytics solution, maybe trying to overcome some of the drawbacks of their platform at the time.
Some months after Omniture included HBX/VisualSciences in their shopping list which has lead them to acquire companies providing behavioral targeting, multivariate testing, insite search technologies, surveys and probably I’m forgetting something on their current solution portfolio. This makes them today (in my opinion) the most complete 1-stop buy to emarketing analysis and optimization technologies. Furthermore their recent agreement with WPP shows that they are not only tool-savvy but also quite market wise gaining efficient access to top/key accounts worldwide. Currently I far as I know VisualSciences customer have been kept on the VisualSciences tool (HBX’s don’t) but I’m not sure if they are any plans or investment to continue development of the VisuaScience platform.
4 to 5 years ago Webtrends was probably the Web Analytics vendor with the biggest customer base. Most of them were legacy customers with a log-only analysis solution. Their inability to offer a suited update to a tag or hybrid solution and migration to a recurrent license fee allowed other vendors to win those former Webtrends customers. Just recently after firing several directives, maybe a year ago or less, Webtrends have shown signals of a more clear marketing strategy. In my opinion they still haven’t been very aggressive to update their customer base but at least they are trying to compete with Omniture/Unica for a share of the campaign optimization technologies market.
Urchin/Google Analytics. Before Google purchased Urchin they were just one more player in the market (one of the small ones). Why did Google choose them? What make them the right choice? In my opinion besides having a quite straight-forward tool even before becoming Google Analytics, the key element that made them a suited candidate for Google’s Web Analytics service is the tool’s architecture. I think looking back 4 years Urchin was the one tool that relayed the most on the client side for the logic of the tracking. Sure, they were several tools using tags but the way in which Urchin handled several key processes of the measurement allowed them to handle more traffic with less processing capacity on the third party collecting/processing/reporting site. After Google acquired Urchin and turned it to Google Analytics (finding inspiration-merging some product philosophy from Measure Map) they set-off to become the best free web analytics tool. And in my opinion they have succeeded. Since they are not a paid solution-provider, what’s their goal? Clearly aid the development and expansion of Google’s paying business mainly Adwords and Adsense.
IndexTools. Let’s hope Yahoo Analytics! has better luck than Microsoft adCenter Analytics (originally project Gatineu) which has recently been shut-down. In my opinion IndexTools was a rising star when they were acquired. They had a solid Web Analytics tool, they had just released and automatic bidding tool based on performance measured with the Web Analytics tool and integrated with Adwords, Overture and MSN (probably that got them on Yahoo’s site on the first place) and they had announced a behavioral target engine on their product road map. Instead of that right now they are dealing with wether or not they should really open the tool free to everyone (so far it’s free but only opened to beta accounts) and how to handle this load.
Unica. I love their positioning! The multichannel Web Analytics solution. I haven’t used the tool but I have been shown a demo and a partner of mine has actually had access to it. What I have heard and seen makes me want to work with Unica during 2009. Their origins are away from Web Analytics in the Marketing Resource Management (MRM) datawarehouse/silo infrastructure and solution providers and I think this know-how combined with their timely acquisition of Sane Solutions allowed them to enter the Web Analytics marketplace strongly and with a differentiating edge.
Is clear these are not the only vendors, just for a reference take a look at the post announcing the closing of Microsoft adCenter providing references to other tools. I guess these are the ones I have been following during the last years.
Maybe a little precision: WebTrends has had tagging for a good 6, 7 years, if not more. Their main problem was that they were the by default application many ISP would use (and would *never* implement correctly) to spitout uncustomized meaningless reports (to their defense, they were giving those reports for free, because nobody was given any value to WA back then).
WT suffered a lot from that motley base of bad implementations. Came Omniture along who would say that WT was old school, log only analysis, and expensive. Omniture strategy, which they still apply to this day, was to price SC very low, and then charge customers whenever they wanted to have stuff, which were included out of the box in WT (at least in their heigh level product). Once the client was signed, and isn’t it the most important thing to do first, to hook the client?, Omniture could start charging them for any little metrics clients needed, making it at the end as expensive, if not more, than WebTrends. I know this because I used to be a WT reseller.
You are right htough about WT not being agressive enough, especially with products such as Marketing Warehouse and Visitor Intelligence. The Warehouse has had some scalibility problems, but I hear the new version solves them. VI may be no Visual Sciences, but it is at least trying to get to the next level of WA. I’ve never seen Discover in action.
I look forward to seeing how things will evolve in the behavioral analysis market, particularly with the free solutions; hopefully Y!WA will become general availability this year!
Jacques Warren
14 Mar 09 at 4:08 pm
Hi Andrés:
I really enjoy reading your post. Very focused, clear and showing great understating on the companies.
Just FYI currently Indextools are doing their migration into Yahoo! Data Center during next 3? months.
Dennis just announced that into his blog http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2009/03/yahoo-web-analytics-faster.html
When they finish the whole process Yahoo! Analytics will became available for anyone.
Best,
Justo
14 Mar 09 at 6:02 pm
Hi Jacques,
I agree with you that WT have had a tag based solution since 6-7 years at least. My point is that a great deal of their customer base instead of upgrading to either a SaaS or inhouse tag/hybrid tool from WT ended up changing provider. I think looking back 6 to 7 years ago they were the market leader and they fail to evolve with their customer base from the more IT-log customer to the Marketing-tag one and that make them lose their position. I have been looking at their new product releases and their offer looks back in track. For the sake of competition I hope they do well. I think this benefits end-customers and consultants alike.
Justo, how are you?
I really hope Yahoo Analytics! challenges GA for “the best free Web Analytics tag”. I don’t think is easy both in terms of features (which Indextool/Yahoo Analytics! had) and also been able to scale to the avalanche of user (traffic) signing-up.
I hope they open the tool soon to everyone and keep the feature-set.
Andrés
14 Mar 09 at 10:32 pm