As you may have read from a couple sources, Yahoo! announced it acquired web analytics vendor IndexTools.
While we at OX2 can only rejoice for Dennis “R. for Red Bull” Mortensen and his team, we are left to wonder what will become of IndexTools as a solution, and most specifically, how it will integrate into Yahoo!’s offering… or not.
If anything, this acquisition means at least one of the following is true:
- Dennis’ manic efforts at promoting IndexTools paid off; Red Bull can help but it definitely takes Dennis’s spirit and drive to achieve that level of recognition for IndexTools!
- IndexTools must be doing something right with their approach, technology and pricing model
- Yahoo! is finally gearing up for web analytics after timid forays into analytics and conversions via its Panama platform.
- Yahoo! definitely needs to review its April Fool’s deadlines!
If you checked the first 3 options, you’re very probably right.
Eric Peterson touched on the topic in his blog post : what will become of IndexTools as a solution?
Will it remain a standalone solution? Will it be integrated into Yahoo!’s platforms somehow? (à la Flicker)
Will it turn into… *gasp* a widget!? Only time and timely leaks will tell
Back on the topic of the acquisition itself, we are clearly in a scenario where the buyer is not a web analytics player, unlike what we have seen in recent acquisitions (Instadia, Visual Sciences) but it does remind us of what happened to Deepmetrix when it was acquired by Microsoft.
This last bit begs the following questions:
- Is Yahoo! responding to Microsoft and its newly rebranded Adcenter Analytics?
- Is this a bid to offer cutting-edge analytics to support SEA campaigns?
In both cases, it is obvious that Yahoo! took their sweet time selecting a WA solution to acquire but at least they went for a finished product, compared to the massive beta phase that AdCenter Analytics is going through (sorry Ian, it’s just not working out for me). IndexTools is a very significant alternative to other solutions out there, competing toe to toe with SiteCatalyst, WebTrends et al. The Rubix interface also makes it very user-friendly and makes data discovery and segmentation a breeze.
Short of wrenching Google Analytics from Google, it looks like Yahoo! made the right choice.
Last but not least, there is the issue of pricing.
Dennis used to tell jokes, saying “IndexTools is SiteCatalyst at 30% of the Omniture price”. Even at 30% of Omniture prices (and prior to any negociations ), IndexTools can be pricey as you can imagine but remember, license cost should only be 10% of your Web Analytics budget anyway
I am no expert in Yahoo! pricing but rumor has it that Panama access is based on a yearly flat fee on top of ad cost. If this is the case, would this fee increase to include IndexTools usage?
Speaking of costs, the euro amount of the acquisition is undisclosed but chances are Red Bull is flowing like champagne in Budapest right now!
Cheers to Dennis and his team for a job well done and good luck for your adventure with Yahoo!
As always, constructive comments are welcome!
(and contact me if there is any leftover red bull )
Hi Julien,
We at Omniture congratulate IndexTools and welcome Yahoo! back to the Web analytics business. Let’s be clear though: this move by Yahoo! was done to compete with Google. IndexTools does not compete “toe to toe” with Omniture. The majority of their customers are small businesses (80% of IndexTools customers are SMB according to CMS Watch.) This is great news for small businesses that use Yahoo advertising. However, mid-market and enterprise customers demand advanced functionality, deep domain expertise and specialized services.
I have written more on the subject here:
http://blogs.omniture.com/2008/04/10/is-web-analytics-easy-hard-how-about%e2%80%a6mandatory/
I’m not sure that many people understand that Yahoo! already has great campaign tracking analytics tools. For a while now, Yahoo offers two campaign tracking products. One called ‘Conversion Only’ which is free to all clients who run Yahoo campaigns. Conversion Only tracks conversions, revenue, CPA, and ROAS at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level. The other is called ‘Full Analytics’ which is also free, but to clients who tend to spend more advertising dollars with Yahoo. Full Analytics includes everything that Conversion Only does, but it also provides a deeper level of reporting about the visitor after they click on an ad (such as path analysis and abandoment rates)
While Full Analytics does not provide page level analytics (a route Yahoo decided to take after buying KeyLime) it does provide tracking of more than just Yahoo campaigns. It will also track 3rd party campaigns such as Google ads, MSN ads, email campaigns, banner ads, etc….all the way through to conversion.
So expect a lot more to come from the IndexTools purchase.