Briefs

By Shane Atchison, The ClickZ Network, Nov 1, 2007

Earlier this year, I examined the analytics software marketplace. In January, as Omniture gained momentum and Visual Sciences acquired WebSideStory, I wrote Convergence is inevitable," and that it couldn't arrive fast enough in online media, analytics, and optimization.

Since then, a lot has happened in the analytics marketplace. Omniture last week said it plans to acquire Visual Sciences; this winds down nine months of convergence activity. In the optimization space, Omniture purchased Offermatica, and Acxiom bought Kefta. Interwoven last week said it plans to buy Optimost. These moves effectively put the leading optimization vendors into the hands of much larger companies with much broader agendas.

In the media space, Google's planned purchase of DoubleClick was followed by WPP's acquisition of 24/7Media and Microsoft's massive ($6 billion) acquisition of aQuantive. As with the software vendors, the advertising technology and placement solutions moved into the hands of larger and stronger players.

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