• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 21, 2009

Omniture and comScore plan to unveil a partnership Monday that creates a service giving the online advertising industry a more comprehensive view of data to measure performance and digital audiences. The agreement combines Web site analytics data with audience measurement data, respectively, to provide advertisers and publishers with a unified measurement tool.

The deal, intended to solve challenges surrounding measurement, comes on the heels of Adobe System's $1.8 billion acquisition of Utah-based Omniture. The service aims to smooth problems that arise from analytics data that sometimes skew higher when measuring visitor activity on a Web site. Panel-based data typically reports lower.

"Dissimilar collection methods cause confusion in digital media planning and analysis," says Matt Langie, senior director of product marketing at Omniture. "For those advertisers and media planners tying to get the most accurate view of publishers and their audience, we believe it has been holding back digital advertising."

The service will become available to joint Omniture and comScore customers. The system collects the click-stream data from Omniture Web Analytics, such as mobile and page views, clicks, video starts, and interactions with social media sites.

Companies using the opt-in service authorize the data they want to be sent to comScore. So, for example, a large company such as Disney might have multiple divisions -- such as ESPN or Disney theme parks and cruise lines -- and they can pick and choose the information they want to share.

The Omniture data is redirected to comScore. It presents a standard set of metrics to joint customers. The comScore customers will see the information through Media Metrix 360. Omniture customers will see demographic and psychographic information from comScore through the reporting platform.

Clients will not need to retag or back-end integration. Omniture simply needs to "flip a switch," Langie says. "We believe this will increase confidence to rely on one set of metrics for a consistent measure of audience reach and online ad performance."

The project has been in the works for several months, which means talks were underway as Adobe and Omniture were sealing the $1.8 billion deal announced last week. Langie says a handful of companies have been testing the service. Although he would not confirm names, he says customers that would benefit from combining forces with comScore include AOL, NBC, Disney, USA Today, Comcast and MTV.

"The Omniture-comScore agreement is a mutual non-exclusive referral relationship," Langie says.

The non-exclusive agreement could open the door to integration with other companies, such as Webtrends, to provide the same information to clients.