What does the Omniture Baidu partnership mean to you?
Omniture is coming to China. Big Time, judging from the announcement of the Baidu strategic cooperation last week. Or is it? I am still not sure. Having dinner with the Omniture
shortly before the announcement, they sounded more cautious that that.
With good reasons, I believe, since Omniture's products and existing
price structure are not a good match for the mainland market. Yes,
there are sophisticated advertisers in the market. Yes, the market is
growing. But with Google Analytics as a free alternative and WebTrends
with established in the market since 2000 (more on that later), it
seems like an uphill battle rather than a quick win that analysts seem to believe in. China? Yeah! Baidu? Double yeah!!
But what does this partnership mean, for Omniture users, Baidu advertisers and shareholders in both companies? Lets take a look at each group and try get some perspective
Current Omniture users
For the select few Omniture users in China, this is good news. For the longest time Omniture SiteCatalyst was unable to analyze and display Chinese Baidu search terms correctly. They would show up as apparently random double byte characters and you had to click through to the original SERP to identify the term. This also lead to wrong popular keyword results and was a general pain in the "you know where". In the run up to the announcement, Omniture has implemented a custom filter for Baidu that solves the issue for all implementations that rely on the standard Omniture JS tracking code. Since Omniture is highly customizable, and customization often required custom JS codes, alas that does not include us yet *sigh*. But there light at the end of the tunnel. Does it mean that we will spend more money on Baidu? No. But it means that we are finally able to do some meaningful SEM optimization with Omniture. I would be curious to learn for Omniture Search Center users in China how this announcement has impacted their business.
Baidu Advertisers
In the press release enable Haoyu Shen, Baidu.com's vice president of business operations is quoted saying that the partnership will enable "Baidu.com advertisers to increase the performance of their online campaigns, by integrating [Baidu's] search metrics with Omniture [...] Online marketers will not only be able to measure campaigns but also improve conversion by making the end-to-end search experience more relevant. Companies tapping the Chinese market should now be able to reach Baidu.com customers more easily." That sounds nice and makes sense, to a degree. Integrating search metrics with web analytics (post click) data does allow effective optimization. My question is: What is new? This integration was possible before with Omniture SiteCatalyst as well as other tool including WebtTrends, Google Analytics and Baidu's own Tongji. It will be interesting to see how this cooperation influences the adoption of Tongji and how Omniture will adjust its business model to persuade current Baidu advertisers to use SiteCatalyst or Search Center. No details have been announced yet, but let please let me know if you know more.
At the very least, the cooperation provides a great channel for Omniture to work through. Search Engine advertisers tend to be more ROI and conversion focussed and are natural targets for Web Analytics vendors to go after. So if you do spend serious money on Baidu expect a call from your friendly Omniture China / Baidu contact soon, explaining the advantages of Web Analytics and SiteCatalyst /
Search Center. That could provide a significant boost for Web Analytics in China, but the most sophisticated tool is useless, if you don't have experienced analysts to interpret the data. Omniture and Baidu have their work cut out for them, and training web analyst has to be their first priority.
Omniture Shareholders
Omniture Shareholders are the group that has already seen an immediate benefit of the cooperation, with the stock price jumping 6% after the announcement, they have already made a tidy sum. I am not building a sophisticated discounted cash flow model here, but for a jump like that you need to assume a significant incremental contribution to the bottom line from China (say 10%) in the near to medium term (3-5 years). Based on my experience and the experience of the eBay's and Google's of the world this seems to be rather optimistic.
Baidu Shareholders
The partnership with Omniture is a signal for Baidu shareholders saying. "Our advertisers become more sophisticated and experienced. They take more control of their online marketing activities and look for ROI. Some of them so sophisticated in fact that they need web analytics tools that are more sophisticated than our own free analytics tool." If that is truly the case, it is time to break out the champaign, since such advertised tend to spend a large and growing share of their ad budget in search. Currently I see only a handful of businesses that would qualify and see a positive ROI from a large SiteCatalyst implementation, but I am happy to be proven wrong (please use the comment section for that
)
I am looking forward to learn my readers opinion and insights. So please use the comments section of this post, or send me an email.
But what does this partnership mean, for Omniture users, Baidu advertisers and shareholders in both companies? Lets take a look at each group and try get some perspective
Current Omniture users
For the select few Omniture users in China, this is good news. For the longest time Omniture SiteCatalyst was unable to analyze and display Chinese Baidu search terms correctly. They would show up as apparently random double byte characters and you had to click through to the original SERP to identify the term. This also lead to wrong popular keyword results and was a general pain in the "you know where". In the run up to the announcement, Omniture has implemented a custom filter for Baidu that solves the issue for all implementations that rely on the standard Omniture JS tracking code. Since Omniture is highly customizable, and customization often required custom JS codes, alas that does not include us yet *sigh*. But there light at the end of the tunnel. Does it mean that we will spend more money on Baidu? No. But it means that we are finally able to do some meaningful SEM optimization with Omniture. I would be curious to learn for Omniture Search Center users in China how this announcement has impacted their business.
Baidu Advertisers
In the press release enable Haoyu Shen, Baidu.com's vice president of business operations is quoted saying that the partnership will enable "Baidu.com advertisers to increase the performance of their online campaigns, by integrating [Baidu's] search metrics with Omniture [...] Online marketers will not only be able to measure campaigns but also improve conversion by making the end-to-end search experience more relevant. Companies tapping the Chinese market should now be able to reach Baidu.com customers more easily." That sounds nice and makes sense, to a degree. Integrating search metrics with web analytics (post click) data does allow effective optimization. My question is: What is new? This integration was possible before with Omniture SiteCatalyst as well as other tool including WebtTrends, Google Analytics and Baidu's own Tongji. It will be interesting to see how this cooperation influences the adoption of Tongji and how Omniture will adjust its business model to persuade current Baidu advertisers to use SiteCatalyst or Search Center. No details have been announced yet, but let please let me know if you know more.
At the very least, the cooperation provides a great channel for Omniture to work through. Search Engine advertisers tend to be more ROI and conversion focussed and are natural targets for Web Analytics vendors to go after. So if you do spend serious money on Baidu expect a call from your friendly Omniture China / Baidu contact soon, explaining the advantages of Web Analytics and SiteCatalyst /
Search Center. That could provide a significant boost for Web Analytics in China, but the most sophisticated tool is useless, if you don't have experienced analysts to interpret the data. Omniture and Baidu have their work cut out for them, and training web analyst has to be their first priority.
Omniture Shareholders
Omniture Shareholders are the group that has already seen an immediate benefit of the cooperation, with the stock price jumping 6% after the announcement, they have already made a tidy sum. I am not building a sophisticated discounted cash flow model here, but for a jump like that you need to assume a significant incremental contribution to the bottom line from China (say 10%) in the near to medium term (3-5 years). Based on my experience and the experience of the eBay's and Google's of the world this seems to be rather optimistic.
Baidu Shareholders
The partnership with Omniture is a signal for Baidu shareholders saying. "Our advertisers become more sophisticated and experienced. They take more control of their online marketing activities and look for ROI. Some of them so sophisticated in fact that they need web analytics tools that are more sophisticated than our own free analytics tool." If that is truly the case, it is time to break out the champaign, since such advertised tend to spend a large and growing share of their ad budget in search. Currently I see only a handful of businesses that would qualify and see a positive ROI from a large SiteCatalyst implementation, but I am happy to be proven wrong (please use the comment section for that
)I am looking forward to learn my readers opinion and insights. So please use the comments section of this post, or send me an email.
Hello, Florian,
Enjoy reading your Blogs in Chinalytics, actually a cool name !
I am in a consulting service, and one of many services we provide is Web Analytics by partnering with a NY based media optimization firm.
I realized webtrends and its business starting in china back in 2000 here ! And curious about the same and diff of webtrends vs Omniture.
Is it possible for you to do a comparison over these two ? Not necessarily a complete, but start with a good initial, and other guys including me may throw in their knowledge, opinions, insights, etc. to complete it and even expand it to other omniture/webtrends like businesses/companies.
The comparison may start with year business founded, search and banner media partnerships, pricing, services provided, how the services provided, what tags used, how to tag, KPIs, reports, training programs (universities) and the pricing for training, etc.
I am not trying to assign a home to you, hehe, but feel it will be great we have a space here for such a topic.
I just saw this blog and will continue reading and get you my comments for any of your blogs here that caught my eyes.
Hai
Macrosoft, Inc.
Parsippany, NJ
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Welcome Hai, to Chinalytics, and thanks for your comment. I am always excited to welcome new members to the Web Analytics family in China.
Could you share some more background about the Web Analytics services Marcosoft China provides? Where are you based? Please join us if you are around in Beijing for any of the upcoming web analytics events!
As for the Omniture - WebTrends comparison, sorry mate that is out of my scope here. You will find ton's of info for that online. For a good summary take a look at this blog post and podcast from Avinash. Personally I am truly agnostic about tools. I strongly believe that most tools today can fulfill any requirements we might have in China. The challenge is finding the right analysts to make sense of all the data. What I am trying to do in this blog is provide a China angle. From that perspective I might try a limited comparison in the future. The first step will be inviting the main vendors for a quick presentation and Q&A session during a Web Analytics Webnesday in Beijing. I will take this opportunity to ask the most pressing local questions (e.g. price, hosting infrastructure, double byte character support, local support & documentation, training) to inform such a comparison.
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Florian,
Sorry for late message, I am always busy :-(
Macrosoft is NJ based, partnering with a NY based web analytics service provider as a tech and service supporting team.
Most tech support is provided through our team in Shanghai. Recently, we are working on an newly invented methodology about tag generation and tagging, also, we provides service on the life cycle of web analytics including business analysis, tagging solution metrics, tag generation, tagging, reporting and business insight.
All our clients are from North Americ no local clients in shanghai or china so far.
I am US based with few visits to shanghai every year. would like to meet you and your web analytics friends innchina next time I visit China.
Hai
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Hai, glad to learn more about your work at Marcosoft. I would love to learn more about your services in person. Please include Beijing on you itinerary, I am in Shanghai not near enough. That invitation to Beijing of course extends to your team members. If they are coming to the capital, please ask them to look me up.
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Florian, I could not agree more with your sentiment in this post-- "My question is: What is new?"
In a market like China where selling software is always an uphill battle against the various FREEs (fair to poor local simplified version, the full monty illegal real version, and 70%-80% of the fully monty free).
The last, a reference to Google Analytics which Bryan Eisenberg recently mentioned is featured enough for most advertisers, particularly new adopters to analytics (which is roughly 99.5% of China and 97% of the rest of the world -- exaggeration, yes, but not by much).
The end result is that this is one of those famous "Looks good in a press release" type of news; lots of fluff, light on substance.
However, at least by making noise via the press release, a few more people probably became aware of analytics in China and that is good for all faithful and loyal readers of the Long March Blog.
-TR
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I can't believe that people in China have no idea about analytics. I mean, all the great gadgets are coming from this country...
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Most people in the US as well (and other countries as well) have no idea about web analytics as well. Yes China is behind in that regard but this isn't something unique.
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I totally agree. There is still a lot to be done to generate awareness globally. But considering that both WebTrends and Omniture (as well as some smaller player) generate significant profits in the US and Europe but almost nothing in China is a good indicator of market size and maturity.
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Exactly, there are still many people out there haven’t realized the importance of Web analytics. China is not alone.
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Baidu shareholders should be more worried that more advertisers are starting to review their commitments to Baidu, especially the bigger advertisers due to Baidu's reputation as a music piracy haven. So on the contrary, it's a more bleaker outlook that a sophisticated, paid tool like Omniture which would be more likely afforded by the bigger advertisers are now less likely to involve them. You can read more about the call for the advertising boycott here: http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/03/music-baidu-piracy-markets-equity-cx_jc_0603markets2.html
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Hi Maths, welcome to Chinalytics. In my experience very few advertisers have followed the call of the music industry to spend less on Baidu. There is very little to gain for them. Search is one of their most effective channels and Baidu brings 3 to 10 times the traffic for specific keyword. So unless avertisers are willing to comprimize the effectiveness iof their ad campaigns, their will stick it out with the Big B.
Also, it seems to me Omniture has other things to worry about the music piracy on Baidu in China. They need to review and adjust their business model to make it work in China. Hard work ahead.
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