• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 4, 2009

Webtrends is working on integrating its analytics services with several behavioral targeting platforms. When complete, marketers will have an option to feed offline point-of-sale (POS) data from cash registers in brick-and-mortar retail stores into Analytics 9, the latest version of the company's analytics offering released Tuesday.

The Webtrends Analytics 9 upgrades aim to make data the interface. Software as a service (SaaS) clients, which comprise about 85% of its customers, can access the latest release now. The remainder of its customers will gain access to the new features in June.

"The business you run is much bigger than your Web site," says Jascha Kayakas-Wolff, Webtrends VP of marketing. "The ability to take into account data from other sources outside your Web site is important. Technology and data becomes the driver for information and efficiencies."

The upgrades offer Insight for RSS Overlays that determine how other marketing investments influence the Web site by visually overlaying data from any RSS feed on top of trending Web metrics. For example, overlays from Webtrends Social Measurement provide direct insight into the relationships between Web site traffic and activity on blogs, video channels and other interactive media.

The Story View converts data and metrics into color-coded non-technical narratives, similar to artistic storyboards, which context graphs and charts typically don't show. Marketers can download and share the text in PowerPoint, Word, and other formats.

The data collection applications programming interface (API) allows marketers to integrate data into Webtrends's analysis engine. Marketers can feed point-of-sale (POS) data from in-store cash registers. Analytics would treat it as a conversion event just as if the customer bought the products and services online.

The POS data feeds from the cash registers in retail stores to a central repository from companies, such as Oracle, SAP or Teradata. Marketers can extract part, or all, of the data and feed it into the analytic engine and correlate the data to transactions on the Web site.

Casey Carey, Webtrends VP of products, explains that Webtrends is working on integrating with Dotomi, which retargets ads to consumers.

The integration will allow retailers to feed offline POS data into Webtrends Analytics 9, and then into a behavioral targeting platform to retarget ads to customers online, Kayakas-Wolff adds.

Webtrends supports companies from AT&T and Boeing, to Internal Revenue Service and Trader Joe's.