Adobe & Omniture - First Impressions: It's All About Rich Media

Well, it would seem that we're back to the wild and wooly of technology deals.  Adobe must have taken Bernanke at his word today when the Federal Reserve Chairman said that the recession is probably over.  Adobe promptly whipped out their check book and just like that  - acquired Omniture for $1.8 Billion.

This is a big price tag - basically offering Omniture share holders a 24% premium.  Somebody wanted that bright shiny object in a bad way.

But why?

It would seem at first kind of a weird marriage.  What would Adobe - a company known for web technologies such as Flash, and Flex and Acrobat - and design suites  (Photoshop, Dreamweaver et al...) want in a measurement analytics company.

In two simple words: Rich Media. 

Certainly we'll learn more as the acquisition becomes more formalized and information starts to come out.  But my first impression is that this is an extraordinarily smart acquisition by Adobe - and a great way for Omniture to start to differentiate itself in the world of Analytics.

And, the key is in the new richness of Web Content.

With Flash, Air, Flex and Acrobat - Adobe has really made a name for itself in becoming the platform for the "rich media" web. Just consider:

1. Many streaming video sites, including Hulu and YouTube use Flash to drive its video streaming (this is almost enough in and of itself).
2. The use of Flash/Video for banner display advertising is exploding
3. There are a number of companies producing hybrid desktop applications in Air/Flex.  These range from Consumer applications like Ebay Desktop, and AOL's Top 100 Videos Application to business applications such as Fedex Desktop Tools and Demandbase's Streaming Pro Application.
4. PDF's are used almost exclusively as the format of choice for producing platform-free documents.

So....

Well - here's the problem... Adobe, before today's acquisition, was purely in the design and content creation business.  Adobe gave you the tools to create Flash, Flex, Air, Images, Video, PDF Documents and other rich media - but they didn't provide any marketing tools.   In short, they only captured one cycle of the Create. Manage. Measure. Monetize - cycle. That's "create". 

Now, with Omniture they have the measurement piece.  Imagine Adobe/Flash/Omniture becoming the default rating system for online Video.  Basically they could become the Nielsen or ComScore of YouTube Videos.  Or, imagine the new company being able to provide measurement on whether your PDF's are being read - and to what page they were read.   Or imagine, them being able to tell you at what point people fell out of your online video demonstration.    Or, finally, imagine them being able to tell you what parts of your hybrid consumer application are the most popular, the least frequented - or a hundred other things that I can imagine.

To be sure some of these capabilities already exist.  With this acquisition, I think Adobe is quite simply aiming to become the standard of measurement for the rich media web.

If they can make it easy and simple for marketers to include tracking for the rich media Web, Adobe will be on both sides of the marketing equation.

All of a sudden, social media applications, viral videos, rich media flash applications like games - it all becomes measurable.  

Fascinating stuff - and man am I glad to see a significant move in the Tech Sector.  This is *much* more fun.