News yesterday that Adobe bought Omniture surprised a lot of people, including a colleague of mine who called it the “weirdest news in our industry”. As usual hearing so many people say that the acquisition was “weird” or surprising made me think that there had to be some serious value in this deal with the price tag of 1.8 Billion dollars.
Didn’t take long for me to see why this deal is actually an interesting one. Adobe’s moving more and more into web applications, with Adobe Air, and their purchase of Macromedia earlier, I think adding a measurement and analytics service that’s robust and respected like Omniture makes a lot of sense.
I like the idea of Adobe being able to offer metrics and measurement tools for it’s Adobe Air applications, at whatever revenue model; licensing, fees, subscriptions etc, that they choose. And I think they may be able to offer some serious tracking around flash interactions, which is key to advertising.
There might not be a lot of synergy between Adobe and Omniture and probably not a lot of cost savings, but that’s why I think the deal is more likely to succeed longer term. It becomes a partnership where one service offers value to the others.
So while others may think it’s a weird deal, or a surprising deal, it doesn’t take long to see the long term potential and value being created here. Adobe’s a great example of creating new growth through providing value and I think that’s exactly what they’re trying to do here. Rather then trying to squeeze out cost savings and integrate value chains, like a lot of companies (yes Kraft, I’m looking at you). Good for Adobe and Omniture and good luck!
