Web analytics firms ComScore and Omniture have formed a partnership to better analyze and track online audiences. Together the companies will create a unified measurement service for publishers and advertisers, they announced September 21.
Just last week Omniture announced plans to be acquired by Adobe Systems for $1.8 billion.
This venture will combine Omniture’s Web Analytics with ComScore’s Media Metrix 360 hybrid audience measurement.
“The Achilles heel of the online industry is its lack of consistency in metrics,” said ComScore’s CMO Linda Abraham. She added that online advertisers and publishers had often asked why ComScore’s numbers were so different from their own Web analytics numbers.
“Essentially, we’re using two methods to answer the same question,” said Matt Belkin, SVP of emerging business at Omniture. But as more and more ad spend is going from offline to online, the demand for the most accurate analytics is on the rise, he continued.
Abraham explained that ComScore’s panel measurement — which measures the digital world through a sample of about 2 million online users worldwide — is very different from those of a Web analytics firm, which “measures Web analytics on a more granular level within sites.”
“Both sides have good reasons for measuring the way that they do, but to reconcile them, you need to apply audit standards,” she said. “That’s the purpose of this partnership: to automate that process.”
Belkin said that the two companies have been in discussions since the spring, but that a partnership of this type has been “brewing for years” around the industry and that it will certainly benefit online advertisers.
“As advertisers identify the best end customer and sites for advertising, having the most comprehensive set of metrics is paramount,” he said.
Abraham would not disclose financial aspects of the partnership, but said that there’s a lead generation and revenue share for both companies.
Belkin said the partnership is non-exclusive, meaning both companies could forge similar relationships with other analytics providers.
Abraham said that Omniture — with more than 5,000 clients — was the obvious choice for a partnership because “it was the company that was going to give us the biggest footprint in the shortest amount of time.”
Joint Omniture and ComScore clients will now allow customers to use Omniture tags to collect and share information with ComScore’s Media Metrix 360. Both companies are urging clients who are only working with one of them, to contact their respective account managers to add the integrated service.
When asked if the Adobe news would affect this partnership, Abraham said, “[ComScore] learned about [the takeover] when everyone else did,” and that “adding Adobe to the mix just lengthens the list of ways that the companies can further collaborate.”
