Some are rubbing their eyes at the Adoble -Omniture deal, but I feel it’s worth a go, even if there is a 10% chance this merger will work  (as opposed to a 90% chance it won’t).

I hope the merger works and Adobe makes Flash easy to track (and give us some decent heat maps in Site Catalyst, while they’re at it,  too).

What I’ve noticed, in general, -  whenever something becomes too hard or complicated it doesn’t  get done well, or at all (but, easy and hard or subjective – what’s hard for one person might be easier for someone else – what  I’m referring to something being, overall, easy or hard – take Flash tagging, it is difficult, overall, to do well … though in some instances, it’s done very well, even, easily).

We can even argue that Web Analytics is both easy and hard – easy for a few and hard for most … but why is it hard  to do Web Analytics?  It’s hard to figure out what people want to measure and then, go back and enable content so it can be measured …… but does enabling content, so it can be tracked well have to be so hard?    Maybe … it doesn’t.

I think the prevailing thoughts are …. it’s  hard, accept it and plan for it. or Web Analytics is easy – just put Google Analytics on your site and you can do all the analysis yourself.  The truth is somewhere in between.

That reminds me; I wrote about  Oglivy’s Conversation Impact and Razorfish’s Fluent Social Media scorecards as  being  too difficult to set up and  maintain (in my post  On Measuring Social Media … thoughts and a Scorecard) and realized that fits in with this post, in that ways of collecting and processing data that become too difficult, in this instance, also,  don’t get done well, which is why I like a Social Media Scorecard based on Digital Footprint Index, instead.

Getting back to  the point of this post, the Adobe/Omniture merger might end up addressing the ability to track Flash easily, and well, consistently – and it’s not a small thing because so many parts of websites now are in Flash or Ajax,  if someone comes up with a way to make it easy to measure it – it’s worth the risk the venture might fail.

Looking at it another way,  90% of the time, we’ve failed to track Rich Media well, or at all (because it’s hard to set up and do well).

The other point of the Lucidiom post is that the people who work with and support site analytics are almost entirely separate (and don’t talk to each other) than the people who use Flash/Shockwave/Acrobat – here’s a quote from the post:

“….Do they share customers? Only at the logo level. They sell to the same companies, but the customers within those companies don’t typically see each other, let alone effectively talk to each other. In other words, in order to cause their client companies to adopt and integrate their disparate solutions, they are going to have to force their customers (in those companies) to behave differently. It’s not impossible, but such efforts typically take a very long time and a huge amount of cash to drive behavioral change, especially within large organizations.”

My point – Adobe doesn’t have to  force people to behave differently …. the  changes in how people are behaving  are happening anyway – just ask people who are doing Web Analytics if their jobs are starting to encompass (Search, Social Media, Online Marketing and now, Creative …. ).  They are, more and more.

I could go even one step more and say the obvious – Omniture was sold because …. they might not be able to maintain their business model much longer since site analytics has become a “commodity” (charging large sums to blue chip clients might not been sustainable in this new economic reality we find ourselves in), along with Web Analysts (since, with Google Analytics, now, everyone can be a “web analyst” (at least, that’s the perception … it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, any longer).

Maybe, just maybe,   Josh James took the money he could get now – 1.2 Billion, instead of waiting a few years more … and see the web analytics market continue to disintegrate as data collection and analysis becomes  a commodity.

And the idea of merging Analytics with Creative and Community Organizer (Social Media) isn’t entirely new, it was brought up at the Most Creative Social Media Campaigns of 2009 session at OMMA Global, last week by Matt Monahan of CF Holdings  – who said the idea team approach (that hasn’t yet been tried) for new creative is to throw in a Analytics Guru (like me) with a Creative (like the people who come up with pitches for PR and Advertising) plus a Social Media Community Organizer …. that this was the “model” that’s waiting to be tried …. that people are beginning to think is possible.

In fact, I think the only way we’re going to get regular, reliable, actionable insight – is by assembling teams like this …. that fact that it hasn’t happened yet, or much, is besides the point … it will happen, more and more – and some of the “web analysts” the “Omniture people” are going to be talking with the “Creatives – Adobe” people in the same corporation – regardless of this deal happening, or not.

Isn’t that what the Adobe-Omniture merger is really about? … helping this merging to happen?

True, the Creatives, Social Media Strategists/Community Organizers and Web Analysts do talk now … though they don’t normally collaborate well, or at all… and the Lucidiom post mentions people who use Adobe products don’t generally talk to people who use Omniture.

Maybe …but …  that’s a perception … and it’s changing ..  the Adobe-Omniture deal is just an acceptance of that change – that’s what i think.

By the way – some other analysis of the Adobe – Omniture deal are Marketing Pilgrim’s  Adobe’s Analysis of Omniture: Pass the Cigars, It’s a Buy! and VentureBeat.