Q:  At the Omniture developer user group, you mentioned that customers are pulling you into integration projects that really advance beyond current web analytics paradigms. What are customers asking you to integrate and why?

A: One of the things that make integration projects challenging is that they tend to be pretty unique. I guess I’d say that integrations tend to fall into one of three basic types. The most common is probably the integration of multiple management reporting streams. The vast majority of our customers are multi-channel. For many of them, their source of ultimate truth are CRM and financial systems – and data from these systems forms the bulk of what gets reported up to senior management. But the top end of the funnel – where online behavior occurs – needs to be represented there as well. The API makes it possible to pull that online behavioral information at the same time as you are tapping into these other systems – and pushing the information into a single unified (and automated) report. The second type of integration, less common but to me more interesting, is when we pull information so that we can analyze it in more detail. In a way, our SAINT applications are like that – we take advantage of the full-feature regular expression libraries in .Net to built rule-based SAINT tables automatically – something that just isn’t possible otherwise. Finally, we’ve worked on a few integrations where the goal was simply to pull data out of the analytics and into some piece of an online system (usually to push or optimize some part of content). That’s useful but also very provisional – ultimately you’d hope that people use more complete tools for that kind of work.

Q: For those who aren’t familiar with the SAINT (SiteCatalyst Attribute Importing and Naming Tool) API, can you share an example of the kind of data you use it for and why?

A: SAINT is used to generate lookup tables in SiteCatalyst. Probably the most common use is for companies to assign friendly names and rollup categories to campaigns based on a campaign code captured from the URL. But it can be used for almost any kind of variable. Our clients often use SAINT tables for products and merchandising categories, article names, video metadata and more. This all works fine where you control the metadata that comes in (like product id to product name). But it’s nice to be able to categorize external variables as well - things like SEO keywords, article tags, and internal search keywords. To effectively analyze any of these, you need to categorize them. In theory, SAINT let’s you do this. But SAINT tables are strictly a 1-to-1 lookup. You can’t apply any logic like “if the keyword phrase contains XXX assign it to Y Category.” That makes SAINT very difficult and manual for this type of application. We use the SAINT API to pull all the values from a SiteCatalyst variable and then apply a series of regular expression or lookup rules to categorize each value - then automatically generate the SAINT table. It’s almost the only practical way to do analysis on large open-ended fields like SEO keywords or internal search keywords and it’s also very useful for sophisticated SEO reporting.

Q: Semphonic was a very-early-adopter of the Omniture APIs. In your blog, you write about the increasing maturity of the Omniture APIs. Where have you seen improvements and how is that helping you serve customer needs better?

A: It has improved a lot – and in many of the ways you’d most expect as a software system achieves maturity. The documentation and examples are a lot better now. That’s a big deal when you’re first starting out with a new software tool. We happen to be a .Net shop, and when we first got started the security model was just a killer. It took forever just to figure out how to authenticate. That’s really frustrating of course because you feel like you’re just spinning your wheels. It’s also really hard, as a consulting firm, to justify those hours. You can’t tell a client you couldn’t figure out how to logon to the system – so you end up having to eat all those “educational” hours. Now there are good examples that make this pretty easy. The extent of the APIs has also improved a lot. The coverage is pretty darn good now. Finally, the cost model and token model have improved and been clarified.

Q: What would you like to see on the roadmap for the Omniture APIs?

A: Like most developers, I’d still like to see a throttling mechanism as opposed to the current token mechanism for controlling usage. I’ve also campaigned for a system where 3rd Parties like us could buy tokens and use them for custom apps to simplify our client arrangements. In terms of the APIs themselves, I guess I’d like to see direct access to the event level data ala the Data Feed. I think it would be great to be able to customize and launch data feed requests and get back that true server-call level data.

Q: How do you see customer requirements evolving, Vis a Vis Web analytics integration with multi-channel marketing efforts, in 2010?

A: At the upper-end of the maturity curve I think 2010 is going to see a lot of movement on the customer-level integration of web analytics data. To be honest, I thought a lot of this would happen in 2009, but it was such a tough year for big projects that I think most organizations ended up just pushing these types of projects out. My sense is that lot’s of companies are ready to combine key online events with their other customer/visitor data. Doing that often means moving data in both directions: certain kinds of customer data need to move out to the web analytics solution so that you can understand who you’re profiling and what their online behavior means. Then, as behavior manifests itself online, you need to be able to move that data back into your CRM and marketing warehouse systems for outbound messaging.

Q: What’s the most interesting use of Web analytics data you’ve seen, outside the reporting environment of Sitecatalyst?

A:  I have two ways of answering this question. The most “powerful” uses of web analytics data I’ve seen are usually integrations that take advantage of event-based marketing. Visitor X did this online – respond with these changes to the site, this outbound email, this customer communiqué. This is powerful stuff and it takes a lot of marketing operations work – but truth to tell it’s not that interesting analytically. It’s usually just cherry-picking – because the best opportunities for this kind of integration are obvious. Analytically, I continue to believe that one of the most interesting analytics projects we do is full behavioral segmentation. Typically, we take a full Omniture data feed for a month or two and then build behavioral profiles of every visitor in tools like SPSS or SAS using cluster analysis. When we can, we’ll also integrate online survey data. This type of behavioral profiling is fascinating work – but I also think it’s genuinely powerful. It’s the best way I’ve found to make web analytics data actually come alive for marketers.

Q: You’ve recently been writing about application measurement and how that’s different than Web Analytics. As more apps move into the cloud, what should developers be thinking about in terms of measuring their applications?

A: I wrote five long blogs on this - so it’s a challenge to shrink it down to a bite-sized answer. But here are a couple big-picture things. First, you’ll find that measuring applications requires a pretty fundamental shift in measurement thinking. The basic web site measurement stuff (pages,
clicks) really don’t apply. Instead, you need to think about capturing functional usage, application states, and performance information. Unfortunately, you still need to translate this paradigm back into something that works in the analytic solution and that can be pretty difficult. It’s also important for developers to realize that measurement integration takes real planning and testing cycles - and there aren’t simple automated solutions for testing. So it’s vitally important to integrate the measurement into the early stages of development and build a careful test-plan - otherwise you’re likely to end up leaving most of the important measurement on the app cutting-room floor.

Q: What advice would you give to a new Omniture Developer?

A: If you’re picking an environment, PHP is the best supported and documented. Definitely start with one of the sample programs in the gallery – obviously you should pick one from your environment. I find it’s just a lot easier to get started when you can begin by making tweaks to existing code that compiles and works. I also think it’s worth starting with the SiteCatalyst Reporting APIs – or at least understanding them – even if you’re focused elsewhere. I find we end up using these even when we are doing an application mainly focused on something else (SAINT for instance). SiteCatalyst is still at the heart of the environment and those APIs are definitely worth understanding.

Q: In the online marketing industry we hear a lot about strategic issues related to 3 of the 4 P’s; Product, Promotion, and Placement, but rarely ever do we hear about the most important of the 4 - Price! We all learned in Econ 101 that price is a critical determinant of demand-why do you think online marketers often ignore it?

A: Great question to start off! Online retailers, with a few exceptions, have traditionally been price followers rather than price setters. Pricing has not been a strategic action but a tactical one instead with reactions to competition being the primary driver. This has led to price wars that have eaten into gross margins. One of the key reasons for this is the lack of affordable tools that can help make pricing decisions by looking not only at competitive data but also marketing, customer, inventory and supply chain data and do all this in near real-time. For example, while pricing a product you need to consider past seasonality of sales and site traffic demand as well as whether the current inventory levels are overstock or under-stock. This will lead to the most ‘optimal price’ and not simply the lowest price. At CalmSea we call this process Continuous Merchandising TM, and our mission is to help retailers optimize every merchandising decision - from product assortment to pricing, promotions and inventory - by combining their data with competitive pricing information and partner data like Omniture.

Q: CalmSea has built a solution that can look at large volumes of data and determine things like optimal price for a given product or optimal markdown for an overstocked item. How does the integration of online analytics data help you achieve this?

A: Online analytics data is an extremely critical piece in making pricing decisions. Many tools today try to predict demand based on historical sales transactions while ignoring the portion that did not convert into sales - what we call as latent demand. Online site analytics provides valuable contextual data around why the prospect did not convert, their preferences and where they came from, to complement merchandising and supply chain data. For example, it will help pinpoint if the problem is with a lack of site traffic demand generation or with conversions due to a pricing problem. We can thus drive holistic pricing decisions that will drive more conversions thereby improving the bottom-line for the retailer.

Q: What specific online analytics data from Omniture are you planning to integrate with your system?

A: At CalmSea, we are interested in all pieces of data that help our customers optimize merchandising decisions. We believe that Omniture can cover the entire marketing side of the equation. For starters we will pull metrics like basic site traffic and conversion data to help us optimize the price point, while location specific site traffic data helps us drive localized pricing for customers who want that. We combine the same data with inventory and historical sales data to predict future over-stock or under-stock situations. In addition, we can leverage the click-stream path analysis to discern product affinity that in turn can be used to drive bundled promotional offers and product assortment planning for the next season. We think we have only scratched the surface, there’s so much more we can do with things like marketing campaign effectiveness metrics.

Q: Once a customer is up and running, how long does it take for them to get predictive feedback on pricing and assortment from your system?

A: It typically takes us a week or so to get a mid-sized retailer up and running. Once they are up they get visibility into their business metrics immediately. They can also start managing and optimizing prices and promotions immediately. Our science platform is a self-learning adaptive platform and the decisions will improve with time.

Q: For the typical online retailer, what do you expect the impact from deploying CalmSea will be in terms of margin improvement, top-line revenue growth, etc?

A: This kind of solution has proven ROI for the brick-and-mortar retail space. Many of us in fact come from companies that successfully built such software products and sold to customers like Safeway, BestBuy and Walmart. Such solutions have proven up to 15% improvement in revenue and margin. The online world, we believe, provides many more opportunities to improve on this because of newer marketing channels and more efficient merchandising actions like real-time price changes. Our work with our initial beta customers tells us that we will see significantly better numbers in online retail.

Q: While offline retail is still the majority of dollar transactions, the online channel is becoming a significant part of the retail experience. Is there an opportunity for online analytics to influence offline merchandising?

A: I think you hit upon an important ongoing macro change in the market. Today 40% of all offline retail sales (USD 937 billion) are influenced in some way or the other by the online channel. By 2014 this number will be 54%. So online retail expands beyond just what you sell through the online channel. For multi-channel retailers there is a huge opportunity to optimize across the two channels using the strengths of one to compensate for the weaknesses of the other. For example, one of our apparel customers uses the low-cost strength of the online channel to test new products for consumer preferences by location and then stock appropriate products in physical stores. We believe Omniture and CalmSea are at the heart of this macro-movement.

Q: On a technical note, you’ve built your application in Adobe Flex. It’s a beautiful, clean interface…but beyond aesthetics, why did you choose Flex as your development platform?

A: We have been extremely satisfied with the Flex framework and the community around it. Aside from the aesthetics I would say that the productivity it provides is phenomenal after the initial learning curve. The pre-built components and open-source work atop the Flex framework have hugely reduced our time-to-market.

Q: Besides analytics, what else is on your integration roadmap with Omniture?

A: Beyond online analytics we see two major areas of integration in the near-term. First, we plan to integrate with Omniture’s Test & Target module to enable easy A/B testing of price changes. Second, we plan to integrate with Omniture’s merchandising solution to provide a complete solution that includes analytical tools as well as execution tools.

Q: You created ActionSource, Omniture’s tracking solution for Adobe Actionscript-based products. What were the business drivers behind ActionSource’s creation?

A: Omniture was actually an early leader in Flash tracking, having deployed a solution which interacted with analytics through JavaScript in the early days of Flash. This solution was a great start for us, helping a lot of our customers gain valuable insight into Flash based applications when it was considered impossible by most of our competitors. JavaScript was our standard mode of communication with Flash for several years.
I joined Omniture in 2004 after running a marketing agency focused on Rich Internet applications. I had been using Flash since version 3 and loved its ability to provide a rich experience that was not limited by the basic functions of web browsers. It offered an opportunity to do things a traditional web browser could never do. That is why it exploded across the Internet, and that is why Omniture needed a solution that could be as flexible as the Flash technology itself.

I helped a number of customers implement analytics in Flash using JavaScript, but quickly found that because the solution was not native to Flash, it lacked key functionality, and even caused some problems with user experience. The most important element missing from the JavaScript solution was the ability to run the solution independently - as intended with Flash. The flexibility to run a Flash based application in a browser, outside a browser, on your domain, in email, or across a distributed network and always have a consistent and rich experience is incredible. If the solution requires an external JavaScript library, this independence is gone. Another important problem with a solution not native to Flash, and using JavaScript is that when the analytics executes the JavaScript, there is extra processing required which often times causes a hiccup in animation or video playback and can cause a “click” sound in many browsers. Finally, there was also a workflow problem. A Flash developer was also required to build an HTML page and include a JavaScript library and scripts. This was never as simple as it might seem.

With the obvious limitations of a JavaScript solution for analytics in Flash, and my background in Rich Internet Applications, I started working on an alternative solution. At first, it was just for fun, but then I started working with companies like MTV, Lexus, GM, and others who wanted a bettertracking solution for their ever increasing use of RIAs. This created a priority, and I started working in earnest on an ActionScript solution. It was fun. I loved the thrill of reaching certain milestones.

When I had a working solution, I introduced it to Omniture and we started refining and packaging the solution for our customers. Our biggest milestone was when I introduced it at our annual user conference, the Omniture Summit. We had one of the biggest rooms at the conference and it was packed so full that people were standing all around the room. Customers were hungry for a solution that would match the incredible distribution freedom that Flash allowed.

We launched the official solution in the spring of 2006 and we saw tremendous adoption. Not only were customers able to understand their Flash based Rich Internet applications as never before, but because of the insight Omniture was able to provide, they had the confidence to deploy RIAs in mission critical areas of their sites. Omniture provided the analytics that enabled companies to use Flash in areas they had never before dared.

Referencing a 2007 Omniture Summit presentation - In 2006 Nike transitioned from all JSP based sites to Flash RIA based sites, and it was only through the native ActionScript solution from Omniture (named ActionSource) that they were able to have full visibility of mission critical metrics and visitor behavior across the application experience from load to purchase. The timing of the Omniture solution for Nike and other customers was perfect as RIAs using Flash really started to go mainstream.

Q: What’s the difference between ActionSource and standard javascript tagging?

A: Standard javascript tagging relies on a javascript file or library and scripts to accompany the Flash file wherever it is deployed in order to use analytics. The primary limit imposed by this approach is that the Flash application is no longer independent and easily distributed. In order to deploy the Flash file and get analytics with javascript, the two have to always be packaged together and this is a major problem with desktop applications like AIR or RIAs distributed across networks, via email, or embedded virally. In addition, the processing required for the javascript communication can cause poor user experience in rich media applications.
The Omniture ActionSource solution which uses native Flash ActionScript is part of the compiled Flash application, so it can seamlessly transmit analytics data wherever the application is displayed and without any impact on user experience.

Q: You’ve continued to innovate around RIA tracking at Omniture. How has ActionSource changed since you first created it?

A: ActionSource was originally intended to provide analytics for Rich Internet applications, primarily around loads, interactions, path analysis, visitor behavior and more. It has been enhanced to ensure compatibility with all versions of Flash, Flex, AIR, and any other Adobe solution which uses ActionScript, including mobile applications and other devices which use Flash Lite.

Omniture’s very talented engineering team now manages the ActionSource component and its ongoing improvements. Most notable of these improvements are media tracking for full analytics of video and audio playback, and integration with our optimization products. Now customers can not only understand the behavior of visitors using their applications, and how on and offline campaigns are influencing these, but they can also understand full streaming data, and using Test&Target they can test variations of their applications and create dynamic and self optimizing experiences within the applications.

These improvements are opening the doors to a whole new generation of Rich Internet Applications. It will be exciting to see what companies continue to do in leveraging these technologies.

Q: You attended and presented at AdobeMax 2009, what did you learn from the Adobe community?

A: It was refreshing to see the excitement and enthusiasm of those who were learning about how they can use analytics and optimization to lead a new evolution in Rich Internet Applications. I presented at the conference showing how analytics and optimization are integrated into RIAs, and the participants were fully engaged and very excited, particularly in the area of the analytics driven optimization. Many talked with me about how this was opening new revenue and creative channels for them. That is where innovation is driven.

The Adobe developers, designers, and creative managers have shaped the current Internet with their cutting edge ideas. As they leverage the new combined technologies of Omniture and Adobe, they will lead a new evolution in Rich Internet Applications based on real-time objective analytics and optimization.

Q: What’s next on your roadmap for Omniture?

A: Existing and future Omniture and Adobe customers will see a continued focus on analytics and optimization across all industries. Omniture is being run as a business unit within Adobe, focused on our core competency which is online optimization. The combination of Adobe and Omniture is a promise of more and better for all our customers, whether they are in retail, media, B2B, finance, travel, telecom, or any other industry. They will benefit from the combined opportunity of Omniture and Adobe. It is very exciting.

You can expect to see a lot of exciting convergences of the Omniture and Adobe technologies. Early on, we will see the existing ActionSource components for analytics and optimization included as options for streamlined instrumentation of these technologies in the Adobe development applications. The net result of this is that companies using Omniture technologies will continue to see the high standards of products and services they are used to, but they will also have opportunities to streamline implementations and improve communication and collaboration across their business units, even extending their ability to optimize their online and offline channels.

Adobe and Omniture are extremely innovative companies, with top talent across multiple industries. The innovations and integration opportunities we see today will be expanded many fold in the months to come as synergies between applications and processes are extended, and as customer feedback helps us find new opportunities.

Stay tuned, you will see a lot of incredible, and value oriented solutions come from Adobe with the Omniture technologies and services. Very exciting.

Q: What were some of the drivers behind your Twitter integration? What data are you pulling and how are you using that to improve Ariba’s marketing efforts?

A: For Twitter we have a set of search terms including our brand name that we are monitoring. Currently for those terms, we are capturing the user name, full text of the tweet, and the search term. With that we can see by search term the conversations taking place. This also provides a historical view into these conversations as well. Part of our marketing effort is to be part of the conversations about Ariba and the areas we specialize in. Being able to have this data and monitor it within SiteCatalyst is exciting.

Q: You recently integrated Omniture with Yahoo Pipes. What did you integrate and why?

A: We found a user created pipe called “Social Media Fire Hose” and it is just that. This particular pipe will search blogs, news agencies, and numerous other social media sites on any set of terms you provide. It will also return the data in a JSON format that is easy to consume and parse. This data combined with the data pulled from Twitter, gives us a more complete view of the “buzz” on the terms we are searching for. And it will provide us with a greater ability to join these ongoing conversations.

Q: You recently did some innovative work to improve your ability to track flash video. What problem were you trying to solve here and how did you solve it?

A: We have a large collection of video files in our online Resource Library for our users. (Webinars, demos, etc.) in various formats (wmv, flv, and even some on YouTube) and from a maintenance standpoint I wanted to find one player, one method to be able to track them all, and get the same level of useable metrics from each format. The task of converting our entire library of wmv files to flv was not a good solution to the problem. A few weeks back I read a blog post about a player from LongTail video, called JW player that would play wmv, flv files, & YouTube videos, and also had an open API for being able to work with the players event listeners. After a bit of research and testing I was able monitor the events and track all the video events we needed and submit the data into Omniture. This method has allowed us to track all the videos in our existing library without having to spend time converting videos or embedding code into a custom flv player.

Q: What’s next on your integration roadmap with Omniture?

We are in the beginning phases of using Genesis to integrate Salesforce & Omniture to provide both sales and marketing a better view into the interests of our web visitors. Aside from that we will continue to enhance the tagging of elements on our site to improve the level of detail in the Omniture reports.

First Place - Technology Leaders, “Dynamic Alerts”
Technology Leaders, a web analytics consultancy, created “Dynamic Alerts“, an application that monitors SiteCatalyst report suites and emails analysts when any measurements stray from their historical norms. The interesting thing about this application is that it doesn’t require manual setting of alerts, rather it uses an algorithmic approach to automatically calculate statistical norms for all metrics in SiteCatalyst and only alerts analysts when a metric falls outside of those norms. It’s a step towards a ‘virtual analyst’ and can be invaluable to analysts tracking very large volumes of metrics across multiple report suites.

Tie Second Place - Bell Canada, “Multi-Graphs”
Bell Canada’s “Multi-Graphs” app empowers analysts to quickly generate multi-line reports and/or spot patterns which involve more than one dimension and/or metrics from different SiteCatalyst report suites. As an implementation partner, Bell Canada manages a large number reports across multiple reports suites. They needed a way to quickly generate at-a-glance views of key metrics across those reports suites. Because of the multi-report suite nature of the application, Bell Canada had to utilize both the SiteCatalyst Reporting and Administrative APIs to create a merged view of data.

Tie Second Place- Earthbound Media Group, “Blog Monitoring and Brand Tracking”
Using the Technorati and Twitter APIs, Earthbound Media’s “Blog Monitoring and Brand Tracking” app queries hundreds of millions of tagged user generated content pages to measure brand mentions and define the number of links generated to a website. The app gives analysts the ability to easily track brand mentions or related keywords across the blogosphere and micro-blogosphere. It parses the data returned from the Technorati and Twitter APISs and inserts it into SiteCatalyst, providing a complete view of brand mention activity.

Congratulations to Technology Leaders and our two runner-up finalists for their innovative applications. These apps offer a glimpse into the future of digital marketing, a future which will depend on the ability to measure, optimize, and automate across a broad set of channels in a near seamless fashion. To see more digital marketing innovations from the Omniture Developer Community, visit our code gallery at developer.omniture.com/codegallery.

It’s very satisfying to see developers in action, fulfilling that platform promise. One great example of this has been the social media extensions that the Omniture developer community has created. Social media has emerged as a critical channel for brand development and awareness. We all know the social media marketing mantra… you don’t control your brand anymore… consumers do. As a result, companies are struggling to understand exactly how their brands are performing across the social media universe.

Omniture’s developer community has created an interesting set of apps to respond to this growing need. Omniture’s own Adam Greco created a Twitter tracking application that was released at our 2009 summit. Egbert Corporation created an application for tracking page-level statistics on a variety of social media platforms including Facebook and LinkedIn. Omniture built a Sitecatalyst extension that enables developers to track the performance of their applications on Facebook. Recently we’ve seen more evolved, feature-rich social media brand tracking applications based on Adam Greco’s original Twitter Tracking work. Hila Strong and Jason Thompson from Spark Networks created a rich new set of reporting features with their Twitter brand tracking extension. Earthbound Media Group, an Omniture partner, took things one step further by introducing brand tracking for both Twitter and Technorati, providing coverage for both the micro-blogging and traditional blogging universe.

From a platform technology perspective, one of the cool things about many of these social media extensions is they represent the first generation of organic Omniture API-to-Third-Party API integrations. The brand tracking apps pull brand mentions from the APIs of Twitter, Technorati, etc and send them to SiteCatalyst Report Suites using Omniture’s Data Insertion API. This type of data aggregation is the foundation of the future of interactive marketing. In the future, marketers will rely on this kind of centralized data store to sense and respond to marketing activity from a comprehensive array of sources. For example, as more companies actively engage and make investments in the social media channel, they’ll want to know the value derived from their efforts and be able to answer questions such as:

Do brand mentions generate lift to my website traffic?

What impact do brand mentions have on customer acquisition costs for my search, display, and other online channels?

Do brand mentions affect my website conversion rates?

Initially, these questions will be answered through human driven analysis of the metrics gathered by applications such as the Twitter + Technorati tracking application. Over time, more sophisticated algorithmic-driven analytics and optimization will be available to help marketers understand the cross-channel impacts of their various campaign activities. It’s an exciting future to contemplate and one wholly different from the fragmented world marketers live in today. Omniture is poised to sit at the center of this new world, as the only company in the industry with measurement capabilities that touch every stage of the online marketing funnel. Our Developer Community’s social media extensions are a reflection of this centrality and our platform’s ability to quickly adapt to emerging trends in the online marketing industry.

As compelling a package as the iPhone is, I’ve been one of those holdouts waiting for ’something else’. Technology evolution is a funny thing, in the case of mobile devices small but important traits may lead to the dominance of one device over another. As a PALM Treo user for many years I just couldn’t swallow giving up my handy QWERTY keyboard. As cool as the iPhone is, this one feature led me to sit on the sidelines until either iPhone or a competitor introduced an evolutionary offering that included a keyboard. After wearing the phone fashion equivalent of dad jeans (the TREO) for two years too long, along came the PALM PRE.

Black, sleek, hidden slide-out keyboard, iPhone like interface (but better!) designed under the leadership of Jon Rubinstein (now Palm CEO), the former executive in charge of the iPod division at Apple, the PRE is a glorious meld of everything I loved about Treo and everything I wanted in an iPhone. After waiting in line at the Sprint store on the day of release I got a hold of one of the first limited-release PRE devices.

With the PRE in hand, my first destination was the ‘App Catalog’, with a few swipes of my finger I was in. To my relief all the critical stuff I use on the web was already there…GMAIL?… check…Facebook?… check… Twitter?… check… plus there were some other fun surprises like LinkedIn and the New York times daily reader application which presents the top stories in highly readable and easily scrollable text. So far so good. All these apps were written against Palm’s revolutionary, Linux-based WebOS…which I’ve heard is much more developer friendly than the iPhone.

Based on the newness of the WebOS, I wondered if Omniture was ready to support measuring app usage on the PRE device. On the Monday morning after scoring my PRE, I paraded it around to some members of our SiteCatalyst team, hoping they would sense my early-adopter coolness (and forget my dad-jeans Treo). I was pleased to find out that SiteCatalyst standard Java Script code is compatible to measure and report PRE’s WebOS apps. Anyone developing apps for the PRE can use SiteCatalyst to:

• Measure the effectiveness and impact of your Mobile App investments
• Understand how users are engaging with the app to improve content, layout, user experience and conversion
• Get insights into how users are adopting and sharing the content with others

Given the growth in Smartphone application adoption, it’s no surprise Omniture stands on the cutting edge of new releases like the PRE. According to mobile industry research, worldwide shipments of Smartphone’s are expected to grow from 164.7M units to 363.3M units in 2012. At the same time, marketers are purchasing more mobile advertising to reach this growing audience. Mobile advertising spend is expected to sky-rocket from $1.7B in 2007 to $12.8B by 2011. Based on my experience with the ultra-usable PRE, it wouldn’t surprise me if I shifted a significant amount of my web and email activity to the device. With the new app measurement for the PRE, mobile app developers will be able to use SiteCatalyst to figure out how I and millions of other users are engaging with the mobile Internet, leading to a better and more relevant experience for all.

Partner Enablement API
The partner enablement API includes web services for integrating data and configuring integrations between partner applications and Omniture. Using the partner enablement API, a partner can map and test the data exchange between apps, then easily expose their integration within Genesis so customers can use the drag and drop interface to automatically connect integrations to the Omniture Online Marketing Suite.

In the past, it took a lot of teamwork between partners and Omniture to build new Genesis integrations and expose them in the suite. The new APIs give partners greater independence in the process, which should result in richer and more robust integrations along with faster upgrades to integration functionality. With over 200 Genesis partners, it’s important that our partners are as self-sufficient as possible in building and maintaining their integrations… this new partner enablement API does just that.

Developer Sandbox (Beta)
In addition to the partner enablement API, we’re also rolling out a Beta developer sandbox for select partners. The sandbox is designed to give partners a full-featured SiteCatalyst development environment with access to both the partner enablement API and all product APIs that currently support the suite. These include:

• Data Import APIs - these APIs enable the import of product and content classifications for enhanced SiteCatalyst reporting, import of data from internal or third party systems for combined measurement of offline and online marketing initiatives and the ability to perform server-side website data collection
• Reporting API - this API enables third-party applications to access SiteCatalyst’s core report data
• Administrative API - the Administrative API allows third-party applications to configure SiteCatalyst user permissions and report suite access
• DataWarehouse API - the DataWarehouse API enables partner applications to define and export targeted visitor segments for remarketing campaigns

In addition to API access, the sandbox also provides a live demo data feed that automatically populates the development test report suite with artificial hit-level data. Developers will also have the option of uploading their own test data to an empty demo report suite.

While still in Beta and available only to select partners, Omniture intends to provide access to the developer sandbox to all partners, including our 500-plus channel partners, over the course of the second half of 2009. That’s a very large pool of innovators and potential innovation wating to be unlocked. The possibilities are endless … new marketing automation tools, segmentation and targeting across multiple marketing channels and technologies, and advanced predictive analytics are just a few things that come to mind.

Partners interested in accessing the sandbox should contact their partner account manager to request participation in the beta program. To learn more about becoming an Omniture Partner please visit http://www.omniture.com/partners.

The winner of the 2009 Developer Connection Customer Challenge was Hila Strong, Business and Web Analyst at Spark.net. Hila and her counterpart Jason Thompson, also from Spark.net, developed the “Breakeven App”, an application designed to help web analysts calculate the dollar value of visitors for any conversion event. It compares values before and after a site change is implemented and then calculates a conversion breakeven point. In other words, this app calculates what the conversion rate SHOULD be at any given period for revenue to break even, or increase. With the Breakeven App you can ensure that your acquisition costs do not exceed revenue and can quickly be alerted when they do.

I recently asked Hila Strong about her experience with the Developer Connection challenge and her take on the Omniture APIs.

1) What prompted the creation of the Breakeven App?

When a site revision or new feature is published to one of our sites, we often look for a lift in conversion to measure the success. Although that lift is a result of increased sales, it may not always mean an increase in revenue.

In our business, we could potentially increase conversion within the checkout process, but simultaneously result in a lower average selling price. It is key for us to always measure conversion in terms of revenue.
Moreover, in our particular case, members are very sensitive to any kind of change, and we cannot always perform random A|B tests. So it becomes extremely important for us to properly analyze the impact to conversion.

I was inspired and became driven to figure out a simple way to calculate a break-even point that will measure where conversion should be… for revenue to break even or increase. To calculate what conversion should be, I would compare the value of the conversion event before and after the release of the site revision or the marketing campaign we are measuring.

When the release of the Omniture API was announced, I immediately saw an opportunity to build an app that can do that calculation on the fly for any conversion event defined on the site.

This app was meant to essentially place the break-even analysis at our fingertips, and allow us to slice the data using custom segments (like channel and keywords) for additional insight. I wanted to be able to provide deeper analysis and more actionable results in a shorter amount of time.

2) Are you continuing development on your application, if so what features do you expect to add to it?

We are currently working on Break Even 2.0 which will utilize the Discover API to offer the following additional functionality:

1. Segmentation of the reports by any pre-configured or custom segment

2. User entry of the ‘Comparison Period’ (right now you can only compare to: 1 day, 7 days or 30 days prior)

3. Weekly trending of the ‘Reporting Period’ to reduce the noise of temporal changes

3) Are you considering developing any new applications?

Yes. We have already developed and released the Twitter Analytics integration app this month, and have been using it for a couple of weeks now to track brand related tweets. This app is documented and published to the Omniture Developer Code Gallery here and is completely configurable to fit any client that wishes to add a Twitter analytics reporting suite into their SiteCatalyst implementation.
We are also in the process of scoping out 2 more apps for development, with one already in the research phase.

4) What new functionality would you like to see become available as part of the Omniture APIs?

We would like to see an addition of an “Omniture API Marketplace”, something similar to the iPhone App Store. I would see this as an extension of the current Code Gallery. The Marketplace would allow developers to offer Omniture approved applications, free or for a set price, to existing Omniture customers. Omniture would take a cut, similar to what Apple does, for each application sold.

I believe that this approach would drive a frenzy of activity in the developer community and would ensure an ongoing stream of groundbreaking applications built on Omniture’s technology.

Over 25 custom applications have been submitted to the Developer Connection code gallery since the release of the API’s last summer. We’re excited to see what our developer community has in store next. To stoke the fire a bit, we’re sponsoring another $25,000 Developer Connection Challenge for Omniture Partners that begins March 26th and will run through June 1st 2009. Winning partner applications will be announced June 15th and will receive broad recognition in the Omniture community with joint press releases, promotion of their applications to Omniture customers, and be featured at Omniture Summit 2010. Check back in June to see the winners!