WebTrends Acquires Optimization Firm

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Web analytics provider WebTrends has acquired online ad optimization provider ClickShift. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We interviewed our customers and found interest in increasing automation across campaigns, and in multivariate testing. ClickShift can help us deliver that with its unique offering and depth of talent," Jason Palmer, VP of marketing at WebTrends, told ClickZ

ClickShift brings to WebTrends a suite of marketing optimization tools, primarily for multivariate testing of paid search campaigns. It also brings aboard a team of seasoned marketers, including co-founder and CEO John Rodkin and CTO Leo Chang, who co-founded contextual ad player Flyswat and continued together at NBCi when that company was acquired.

WebTrends will integrate ClickShift's products and technology into its Marketing Lab suite, alongside its flagship Web analytics product and a new marketing warehouse product launched earlier this year. The first WebTrends offering to incorporate ClickShift technology will be a paid search optimization product, which will be rebranded as WebTrends Dynamic Search. Later products will address other acquisition channels, Palmer said.

Dynamic Search will allow marketers to optimize their paid search campaign against any criteria. It automates multivariate testing of keyword, creative, landing page, and search ad network to find the most effective combinations, and reallocate the appropriate budget to that campaign.

The agreement came about after ClickShift and WebTrends entered partnership discussions earlier this year, with ClickShift looking for a distribution partner with an existing client base, and WebTrends looking for a way to offer multivariate testing to its customers, Rodkin told ClickZ.

"We discovered very quickly how aligned our product visions were," he said.

Another search-related acquisition was announced today, with SEM agency iCrossing acquiring Newgate Internet, a paid search, reputation management, and word-of-mouth agency. Newgate will be absorbed into iCrossing, making it one of the top paid search agencies in the U.S. It brings several large retail brands with it, including Williams-Sonoma, The Gap and Lego.