• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 15, 2009

Adobe Systems reported Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire analytics giant Omniture for $1.8 billion. The acquisition will combine the world's largest provider of design and content creation tools with the leading measurement and analytics company.

The deal will allow Adobe to expand into the rapidly growing advertising market online. "This acquisition will significantly expand Adobe's addressable market and growth potential, broadening solutions Adobe provides to the rapidly growing Internet advertising, e-commerce and digital media markets," the company said in a statement.

The merger should close this quarter -- which ends Nov. 27, according to Adobe, which makes Reader, Flash, Photoshop, and other creative and content tools. Omniture will become a business unit within Adobe. Omniture CEO Josh James joins Adobe as senior vice president in charge of the business unit, reporting to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

"Omniture's mission has been to enable our customers to optimize every digital interaction," James says in the statement. "By joining forces with Adobe, we will accelerate our ability to deliver on that vision."

Webtrends CEO Alex Yoder believes Adobe's acquisition of Omniture signals "the absolute certainty that analytics is core" to the marketer. It demonstrates the importance of bringing the creative resources in marketing closer to analysts and business owners.

Adobe has the potential to become the independent arbitrator to help create new standards in advertising that have been slow to emerge. Forrester Research Principal Analyst Suresh Vittal says Adobe clearly sees the value in combining measurement with content creation. "I suspect they saw the value in being able to set the standards for advertising and valuing real estate across Web sites," he says. "It is a path strewn with barriers, pretty influential barriers like agencies and media buyers that have a vested interest. It will be a daunting task for them. I guess they felt up to the challenge."

Even with Adobe behind efforts, it won't happen overnight, Vittal says. When you introduce Omniture measurement capabilities it's not just the performance of the ads -- you can for the first time truly value traffic beyond numbers and volume.

"Traditionally, you buy media on the platform where you get a lot of eyeballs," Vittal says. "Now it's not just the eyeballs. You can start to think about measuring the value of those eyeballs -- something advertisers did not have the opportunity to do before."

Vittal isn't entirely convinced that Adobe will sit up and tackle the online advertising space, citing the fact that it's a development tools company and hasn't shown a track record of understanding online marketing.