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Posts Tagged ‘Omniture’

Motally Cooks Up Flexible APIs To Allow Publishers To Import And Export Analytics

Analytics can be valuable if you are able to actually turn this data into content that you can understand and draw actionable insights from them. Generally this is done through analytics reporting systems, which will make sense of data and produce reports. Today, Motally, which provides user-action tracking services for the mobile web and apps, has released new flexible APIs that allow mobile publishers to import and export their mobile data and integrate Motally directly into other reporting systems.

Motally’s offering gives developers the ability to receive daily reports, web-based dynamic reports and user statistics such as unique users, page views, engagement time search keywords, average pages/visit, etc.  The new API allows app developers and publishers to pull reports out of Motally and integrate them into their existing reporting systems like Omniture. In addition to export APIs, Motally’s new import APIs let developers upload data directly to Motally for processing. This could be useful for platform providers who want to send large quantities of data for analysis on behalf of their user base.

Motally, which recently launched an extension of their mobile analytics to include content developed on Apple’s iPad, support analytics for applications on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms as well as the mobile web. Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.

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Runa’s new service looks to turn web surfers into sales

Last year, e-commerce retailers spend $21 billion, or 15 percent of their revenues, in online marketing to drive traffic to their websites. The end result — a dismal 2-3 percent conversion rate between visitors and sales.

Mountain View startup Runa, a provider of revenue growth and profit maximization solutions, is looking to help e-commerce retailers to change low conversion rates with the launch of their new conversion marketing solution. The new web application focuses on converting web traffic into sales while shoppers are still on the website. By determining a consumer’s buying intent, Runa helps to deliver more effective personalized sale price incentives in real-time.

Here’s an example of how an e-commerce site might use Runa: Say you’re shopping online and you decide to choose a new table for your kitchen. As you proceed to checkout, you suddenly decide you want to shop around. As you click to leave the site, a real-time pop-up appears offering you a $60 discount if you agree to buy the item now. By agreeing, the $60 is taken off your total price at checkout. A demo on the site refers to this as a “cart abandonment campaign.”

Runa works closely with the e-commerce retailers to determine goals and what they call “business rules.” These rules are pre-determined by the retailer to decide the individualized pricing each type of consumer will receive. Individualized pricing can take several forms including discounts, free shipping, buy one and get one free specials or no tax.

Conversion marketing is not a new concept. Companies like Omniture, who provide rich data to customers on consumer behaviors, and RichRelevance, specializing in product personalization and relevance, are helping e-commerce retailers find ways to increase sales (there are a number of other companies with similar goals, too). Both companies lack the real-time benefits but are valuable in compiling data over time to help campaign efficiency.

Not convinced? Runa service is offered on a pay-for-performance basis which means that e-commerce retailers don’t have to fork out any up-front costs making it a low risk option if they are looking to jack up sales just in time for the holidays.

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Venture Exits Might Be Down, But Total M&A Activity Is Definitely Picking Up

The value of venture-backed exits (which is almost entirely M&A these days) might be down about 50 percent in the third quarter, but total M&A activity (including public companies) is seeing a noticeable uptick.

We ran some numbers on Crunchbase, which keeps track of all announced acquisitions, and in the third quarter $31.8 billion worth of acquisitions were announced, double the amount from the second quarter and up fourfold from the $7.6 billion low in the fourth quarter. That number was even up 23 percent from the year before.

Many of the bigger deals involved publicly traded companies, such as Xerox buying Affiliated Computer services for $5.75 billion, Dell purchasing Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, and Adobe picking up Omniture for $1.8 billion.  There were also a lot of biotech and pharmaceuticals deals such as Abbott Labs swallowing Solvay Pharmaceuticals ($6.6 billion) and Dainippon Sumitomo eating Sepracor ($2.6 billion).

The actual number of M&A deals is pretty flat at 213, which is about where it’s been for the past four quarters. But the average value of each deal in the quarter was $349 million, up 85 percent from last year. So buyers might be more picky, but when they do pull the trigger they are willing to spend more money. And they are more willing to spend money for companies with established businesses, which often means they are publicly traded or have been around a while.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Venture Exits Still Anemic In Third Quarter, Down Nearly 50 Percent (Charts)

Despite a couple large IPOs (LogMein and A123Systems) and a steady but tempered flow of mergers and acquisitions, financial exits for venture-backed companies remained anemic in the third quarter of 2009. Data released by both Dow Jones VentureSource and the National Venture Capital Association/Thomson Reuters show declines in both M&A and IPO dollars. VentureSource counts $2.9 billion in combined M&A exits in the third quarter, 49 percent lower than a year ago. The NCVA tallies up a $1.8 billion total, which is down 46 percent.

The two organizations have different sets of data, but they show similar trends. For example, VentureSource counts only the two IPOs mentioned above, whereas the NCVA also counts Cumberland Pharmaceuticals. That’s down from five venture backed IPOs in the second quarter.

IPOs Down

The IPO for battery-maker A123Systems last week was particularly strong, raising $380 million. LogMein’s IPO at the very beginning of the quarter raised $107 million, and Cumberland’s brought in $85 million, for a total of $572 million. That amount is down from the $720 million venture-backed IPOs brought in last quarter, but is up from the $188 million a year ago. Compared to year’s past, though, the IPO window is still fairly shut.

The M&A picture wasn’t much brighter in the quarter. VentureSource tracked 71 deals worth $2.3 billion, down from $5.2 billion last year and $2.8 billion in the second quarter of this year. Some of the larger deals during the quarter were VMWare buying SpringSource for $362 million and Intuit buying Mint for $170 million. (Remember, these are only venture-backed exits. Deals for publicly traded companies like Adobe buying Omniture for $1.8 billion, Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, or Xerox buying Affiliated Computer Services for $5.75 billion are not counted in these numbers).

The NCVA’s data shows 62 M&A deals in the quarter (down from 88 a year ago), with disclosed values of $1.2 billion (down from $3.1 billion a year ago). And the returns aren’t looking so great either. VentureSource says the median acquisition price in the third quarter was $21 million, compared to a median amount of $17 million in equity funding raised prior to the acquisition.

The NCVA similarly shows a decline in average deal size from $96 million a year ago, to $58 million. And the number of deals worth less than the money put into them is more than the number of deals that made money, which is normal.

Average M&A Deal Size Drops

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Adobe Acquires Omniture: It’s All About the Revenue Model

Adobe is looking to stall falling sales and profit by entering into a new market: analytics. But rather looking to R&D, Adobe is instead coughing up $1.8 billion for analytics leader Omniture. This is the largest acquisition by Adobe since the purchase of Macromedia for $3 billion in 2005.

The acquisition has puzzled many, since Adobe and Omniture products really have no natural cooperation. There have been comments about the measurement capabilities that Omniture will give to content built with Adobe products. But in the end the entire deal revolves around two words: recurring revenue. Adobe’s quarterly earnings have fallen due to declining sales of software licenses, and the SaaS model of Omniture will bring the company a recurring stream of revenue.

Sponsor

Omniture is a top dog in analytics. But even though it competes with just about everyone, including Google, in the measurement market, some industry analysts have pointed out that it’s really run out of new ideas. In trying to explain the acquisition during an earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen asserted that buying Omniture was meeting customer needs.

What we found is that as we’ve been talking to our customers, it’s clear that they would like us to do a lot more. For example, the chief digital officers that we talk to at media companies have been telling us that they want to understand which content was performing the best so that they could feature it more prominently and increase their ad revenue.

Advertisers and agencies were using Flash to produce rich ads but they were telling us that they really wanted to understand what the click-through rates of those ads were in real time, to be able to take more advantage of it.

But few analysts have agreed that adding measurement power to content is really the core of this deal. Adobe announced the acquisition alongside a decrease in quarterly earnings. Even if Omniture is no longer at the forefront of innovation in analytics, its steady stream of revenue from SaaS subscriptions is a cash cow that Adobe can’t afford to pass up right now.

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Amateurs vs. Agencies: Microsoft’s Razorfish Acquired

Publicis Groupe SA announced acquisition of Microsoft’s Razorfish advertising agency for $530 million dollars. In a joint press release, the group announced that the deal will increase Publicis’ ability to deliver digital campaigns and further elevate’s Razorfish’s status as a leader in online marketing. According to Bloomberg, in exchange for Razorfish, Publicis will give Microsoft 6.5 million in shares – a deal that makes Microsoft a 3% owner of the advertising company.

Sponsor

As a standalone agency, Razorfish has had a number of high-profile partners including Google, ABC.com, Omniture and Adobe. Microsoft first acquired Razorfish’s parent company aQuantive for nearly $6 billion dollars shortly after Google announced plans to purchase DoubleClick and its display ad serving products. At the time, aQuantive was comprised of Avenue A | Razorfish, DrivePM and Atlas. While the acquisition served Microsoft well by giving the company a good ad management dashboard in Atlas and an ad ranking solution in DrivePM, the Redmond giant kept Razorfish at arms length. Despite the fact that the company won at least 7 Webby’s and a number of other advertising awards, between October 2008 and February 2009, Razorfish cut 120 of its US employees to reduce costs during a particularly bad year for advertisers. With this new deal, the company remains Microsoft’s ad agency of record and gains new Publicis resources to ramp up digital production. Nevertheless, is Razorfish able to deliver on its promise to help “media companies succeed in an era where the audience is also their editor?”

The company has shown a number of user-generated successes including CNN.com’s iReport, Netflix’s Instant Viewing Player and community and TED’s Encyclopedia of Life and Pangea Day film festival.

However, just as agencies are shifting from print and broadcast campaigns to digital advertising, is it possible that amateur dynamos are preparing to hijack the industry? Last week ReadWriteWeb covered Digg’s new ad program – a program where advertisements can be voted up or voted down by the community. As advertising shifts to this new mixed-content model, where are companies more likely to see success, with content from world-class advertisers or trusted community members? As always, especially with the current market, agencies will have to work tirelessly to justify their retainers.

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