WebProNews

Omniture, one of the biggest names in web analytics, is being acquired by Adobe, in a transaction valued at $1.8 billion. Adobe will commence a tender offer to acquire all Ominture outstanding stock for $21.50 per share in cash.

"Adobe customers are looking to us for solutions to deliver engaging experiences and more effectively monetize their content and applications online," says Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. "This is a game changer for both Adobe and our customers. We will enable advertisers, media companies and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets."

Adobe says the deal will enable advertisers, ad agencies, publishers, and e-tailers to achieve greater ROI from their digital investments while improving the end users' experience.

Some (not everybody) simply think that Omniture was out of ideas. SeeWhy Founder Charles Nicholls, who is a 20-year veteran of the software, BI and analytics industry,  recently attended the Web Analytics XChange conference, where John Pestana (a founder and current Director of Omniture), Brett Crosby (Urchin/Google), Matt Cutler (founder of NetGenesis), and Bob Page (co-founder of Accrue, now a Yahoo!) each spoke.

"The consensus, if there was one, was that the industry was approaching maturity, and there was some speculation that the next generation of web analytics was on the horizon, just about to disrupt the status quo," says Nicholls. "Revolutionary in nature, and built for today’s ecommerce challenges, the new generation would brush away the old."

"Little did we know what John Pestana already knew," he adds. "...that a few days later Omniture would be acquired for $1.8bn, a signal that the industry is rapidly approaching maturity and maybe even a wave of consolidation as we saw in October 2007 in the Business Intelligence industry."

Either way, Omniture is Adobe's now, and the company sees the acquisition as one that will significantly expand its addressable market and growth potential in the online advertising and e-commerce industries.