DoubleClick will stop selling its SiteAdvance Web analytics product, the company said this week.
DoubleClick said it inked a deal with Omniture to move SiteAdvance customers to Omniture's SiteCatalyst platform beginning in the first quarter of 2005. DoubleClick will become a SiteCatalyst reseller, offering integration with its e-mail and ad-serving platforms by the second quarter. DoubleClick had introduced SiteAdvance 2 1/2 years ago.
The arrangement is not exclusive. DoubleClick can integrate its e-mail and ad-serving platforms with other Web analytics providers.
DoubleClick has about 50 SiteAdvance customers, including Buy.com, Crate & Barrel and J. Crew. The company upgraded SiteAdvance in August. At the time, it planned two more upgrades by the end of 2005. A recent annual strategic review changed DoubleClick's plans.
“As we looked at our business, we determined we wanted to invest all our resources in our core markets — DARTmail, ad serving and Abacus,” DoubleClick president David Rosenblatt said.
DoubleClick disclosed last month that it hired Lazard Freres & Co. to seek a buyer for the company, either in whole or in parts. The company said its decision to discontinue SiteAdvance was independent of the hiring of Lazard.
Rosenblatt said DARTmail and DART for Advertisers would integrate seamlessly with SiteCatalyst, preserving a key benefit for DoubleClick customers — the ability to use analytics easily to improve their marketing.
From its launch in June 2002, DoubleClick worked to establish SiteAdvance against more established analytics providers such as Omniture, NetIQ and WebSideStory.
DoubleClick thought tight integration with its popular DARTmail and DART for Advertisers products would lure marketers to use it for a range of ad technologies that were closely linked.
“I think DoubleClick came to the realization that they made a promise to their customer base to provide world-class analytics,” said Eric Peterson, a Web analytics market analyst with Jupiter Research. “They realized they just weren't living up to that.”
The financial performance of DoubleClick's marketing automation business unit, which includes SiteAdvance, has been a disappointment. Rosenblatt said the decision to abandon SiteAdvance came after DoubleClick realized it would not be a leader in the Web analytics space.
“We felt we got the best bang for the buck to invest in core markets,” he said.
