Omniture, comScore Attempt Unified Audience Measurement Platform

Partnership combines online and panel-based metrics reporting services.

By Bill Mickey
Monday, September 21, 2009

Web analytics firms Omniture and comScore announced today a partnership that marries their panel-based and online metrics systems. The combination of the two disparate audience measurement techniques is touted as a way to eliminate confusion and provide a more standardized view of Web site metrics.

The partnership comes on the heels of Adobe's announcement of its intent to acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion. Barring any late competing bids, the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Adobe's fiscal 2009.

The Omniture-comScore partnership creates a service that merges Omniture's automated Web analytics approach and comScore's Media Metrix 360 service—a product introduced in May that's already a hybrid panel and server-based system.

The idea is to combine the two techniques—human-based panels and machine counts—for a combined look at audience metrics. Historically, the two approaches have resulted in two different counts, each having their own followers, and have stymied any true standardized approach to online measurement.

"As leading providers of Internet audience measurement and Web analytics, comScore and Omniture are working to provide the marketplace a much-needed solution for consistent Web-wide measurement," said Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore president and CEO, in a statement. "This relationship will deliver to our customers the solution that they have been seeking, thus helping to promote and accelerate the usage of digital marketing intelligence for delivering actionable business results and competitive advantage. We believe it will also help the industry overcome concerns of inconsistent measurement of digital audience and promote further adoption of digital media advertising."

Joint comScore and Omniture customers will use Omniture tags to compile information to share with the Media Metrix 360 service, which, says the announcement, allows users to bypass the usual Media Metrix implementation process.

While the Adobe/Omniture deal resulted in some head-scratching, this partnership is easier to digest. "It is certainly a step in the right direction for both companies," wrote Eric Peterson, founder of Web analytics consultancy Web Analytics Demystified, in an email to AD. "Omniture (and all of the other pure-play Web analytics vendors save Yahoo Web Analytics) have no notion of visitor demographics; conversely, the panel-based services have long been criticized for somewhat opaque models for estimating total traffic. If these companies execute well, and are not side-tracked by Adobe's acquisition of Omniture, I think this partnership has great potential."