Adobe Makes Big Push Into Social Analytics

Salt Lake City-- Adobe gave a sneak peek of its social analytics tool, which is designed to help marketers determine if conversations on social networks and blogs have an impact on business results.

The tool, shown to 2,000 digital marketers and publishers at the Adobe Omniture Summit here, will be made available to a limited number of customers during a test phase starting in April. Plans call for the product to be rolled out in July.

Analysts will be able to track keywords from 45 social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and then see if any conversations had an impact on on-site business results, such as transactions or page views.

"This combines qualitative with quantitative insight into how social affects your business," Jeff Jordan, an Adobe project manager, said Wednesday.

Adobe will team up with a company to incorporate sentiment analysis in the tool, he said. It is currently evaluating companies.

Carmen Sutter, director of analytics at Warner Music Group, said she looks forward to the product release because it will help track conversations about the music label's 600 artists. "I cannot call Kid Rock and say, 'Put a tracking code on your tweet,'" she said.

Initial response was positive. "What makes this tool different from the many capable tools already out on the market is the tight integration of web analytics data with social brand or keyword mentions," wrote John Lovett, a Web analytics expert on Web Analytics Demystified.

"Adobe has a huge customer base among publishers and advertisers - they all use Adobe's creative tools. Adobe can give both sides the tools they need to optimize their online business, and I think bring them together and reduce the friction we have today in online marketing. We can expect Adobe to remain a tools provider to media companies and brands, and steer clear of treading into 'media territory' as Microsoft and Google have done," said Melissa Webster, program VP, content and digital media technologies, IDC, in an e-mail interview.

HootSuite, meanwhile, said Wednesday it will add social analytics measuring tools and customizable reports to its dashboard. The new feature will provide a single view of stats from Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other sources.

"This real-time information will allow marketing teams to rapidly adjust tactics based on data rather than hunches, as well as more clearly understand the reasons for the campaign results," HootSuite said in a news release.

Companies large and small are adding and updating social analytics to their product line-ups. Coremetrics, which is part of IBM, offers a console for analyzing social media channels and campaigns. And SAS, which has its roots in statistical analytical software, has expanded into marketing and social media analytics.

ClickZ is a media partner of the Adobe Omniture Summit 2011.