• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 24, 2010

Marketers want competitive intelligence. Along with basic data, it has become the backbone to marketing campaigns and the key to securing higher online budgets. Recent acquisitions by IBM and Adobe of Coremetrics and Omniture, repectively, demonstrate the trend that Compete expands on in its latest release of enhancements to Compete PRO Referral Analytics.

Eric Austrew -- director of product management at Compete, who spearheaded enhancements for the platform -- demonstrated some of the features in the latest release Thursday, during a webinar. He explained how the tool helps marketers understand the acquisition strategy of competitors, and why traffic to any Web site rises or declines. During a demonstration for the platform, he explained how to get information on competitors' traffic, as well as what sources, categories and channels they use.

Having the ability to understand where traffic comes from -- not to only one competitor, but to many -- can help marketers rethink failing or weak campaigns. Marketers can use the tool to discover new opportunities from search or social media, for example. The numbers should justify the plan.

"Since launching Compete Pro in 2009, the company has released one major product every 90 days," Austrew told MediaPost. The data comes from a panel of more than 2 million people who agree to have their online activity tracked. The panels provide click-stream data.

Enhancements to Referral Analytics include a Traffic Dashboard that enables marketers, advertisers and publishers to explore the traffic metrics of competitors, clients and prospects through an at-a-glance portal. That knowledge can help marketers better allocate budgets for campaigns. "The information can help you respond to competitors' moves that either strengthen your own weak positions or pour more money into channels that work well for you," he says.

The dashboard contains an interactive Channel Map that delineates each referring channel as a separate box, with the option to delve down further into corresponding subdomains and specific channel metrics.

By tapping this enhancement, subscribers can see the portals their partners and competitors use to drive traffic to their sites, monitor changes in the strategy and adjust marketing budgets for maximum returns on investments. The tool costs $499 monthly, as part of the Advance-level Compete package.