Accenture announced last week the pending acquisition of Web analytics data quality company Maxamine, and piggybacked news of their acquisition of multivariate testing company Memetrics, which closed on December 31, 2007. Both companies will be rolled under Accenture’s Marketing Sciences group and pricing was hush-hush as no terms were disclosed.
The acquisitions will fortify Accenture’s foray into digital marketing services, which I expect to be a lucrative field in 2008. Web analytics and multivariate testing technologies often require detailed analysis and expertise beyond what is commonly found within small to mid-sized organizations, thus the need for outside services.
Web analytics veterans will recognize Maxamine as a long-time participant in eMetric events and data quality evangelist. Their solution will meld nicely into Accenture’s services group because it can identify problems with analytics implementations and help optimize investments in enterprise analytics tools. Similarly, the Memetics solution provides optimization capabilities through its testing solution. The deal places a testing tool in the hands of consultants, who can leverage it to take the burden of potentially challenging test creation and analysis off of marketers and instead provide them with answers. This development pushes the managed testing scale (created in my Testing and Optimization Differentiators report, November 2007) to new lengths, by creating a let-us-do-it-for-you approach. Perhaps making a run to keep pace with Optimost and OTTO Digital services.
2008 is off to a brisk start with acquisitions aplenty. If this keeps up (and we expect that it will), I will have something to write about weekly and may need to rename this blog Web Site Technology Acquisitions & Alliances: A Marketer’s Frankenstein.
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