This week Adobe acquired Web Analytics giant Omniture for a large sum of cash ($1.8 billion).  What does this mean for Web Analytics? A lot and at the same time, maybe nothing at all.

First, it proves that Web Analytics has surely made it to the mainstream. If this was even a question in your mind, you are behind the eight ball. However, there are still many doubters out there who don’t think that user analysis really does any good. Omniture has been the most widely known web analytics provider for several years now, along with Coremetrics, WebTrends, a handful of lesser known providers, and then recently Google and Yahoo Analytics. GA became a major player about 2 years ago; Yahoo Analytics came to fruition approximately one year ago. One could say that Google Analytics brought Web Analytics into the mainstream, if for nothing else because it was a free tool that is widely used among companies today for at least a portion of their website.

Yet, even our industry thought leaders still have to give us pointers on how to overcome our HiPPo’s, highest paid opinion.  (Search on HiPPo on Occam’s Razor) Upper management has funded your Web Analytics team but how often to you struggle to be heard?

Second, it proves that Web Analytics has grown up (a.k.a. it can be profitable). While I don’t think this should be a main goal of a web analytics company (maybe that’s the socialist in me), Web Analytics cannot progress if the industry leaders do not turn a profit. If they don’t prove out the concept, there won’t be competition. As we all know, competition is good because it leads to progress.

Third, I hope that the partnership will help Adobe to better understand the importance of web analytics tracking. The industry leaders currently have good mechanisms for tracking flash applications, however there are still some kinks and bugs that will hopefully be worked out, at least with Omniture tracking. Flash continues to be more and more prominent on all websites today. Thus, flash tracking needs to continue to get better and better so that we can accurately measure what the user is doing on the flash object.

Finally, maybe it changes nothing. Omniture will probably continue to operate as it did last week. It’s kind of like Amazon buying Zappo’s. One owns the other but all infrastructure and management/philosophy stay the same (at least for now). I don’t think Adobe buying Omniture will make Omniture any more dominant in the web analytics providers arena. I guess many of Adobe’s clients could be become Omniture’s client (if they aren’t already), but time will only tell on that. As well, it is possible that Omniture will benefit from partnering with Adobe on measuring flash objects, but that should in turn benefit the industry as there were be new and exciting tools from Omniture’s competitors.

One might ask, who’s next? Would Microsoft or IBM take a swing at Coremetrics or WebTrends? Regardless, what I hope doesn’t happen is that these large corporations start to have major influence over said analytics provider. One of my biggest concerns with using Google Analytics is that my website becomes a Google clone (this is not to say that a standalone provider is without bias). The last thing I’d want to see when I open my Web Analytics tool is: “Welcome to XYZ Analytics hosted by Starbucks”. That would just annoy me. Thoughts?

A final note is this. Does this ‘merger’ of sorts give any leverage to Coremetrics or WebTrends? There aren’t any larger ‘stand alone’ providers than them.  I think it does give some leverage. Then again, it also begs the question of why hasn’t someone scooped them up?  Time will tell.