• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 6, 2008

Among product upgrades announced Wednesday, Omniture has added the ability to track video to the latest version of its flagship SiteCatalyst Web analytics software.

The new capability will allow marketers using video in online campaigns to monitor engagement through metrics such as how long videos were played, whether viewers skipped through them, and which led to conversions. The technology can also be used to track Flash- and Flex-based applications and is compatible with Windows Media Player, QuickTime and RealPlayer.

Omniture said the move is aimed at addressing the growing use of rich media, user-generated content, widgets, video and mobile devices. The prior version of SiteCatalyst added features for tracking Web 2.0 marketing campaigns on forum such as blogs and social networking sites.

The new version-SiteCatalyst14-also features a new dashboard that allows users to publish and distribute reports in various formats including PDF, Excel, Word and HTML.

The company also launched a new version of its search engine marketing software that lets users analyze campaigns through metrics such as revenue, clicks, return-on-investment or budget optimization. Its SearchCenter 3 also increases the volume of keywords that can be managed under a given campaign. It also shows natural and paid search results side-by-side in a new interface to make it easier to track SEM efforts.

Separately, Omniture on Wednesday said it had entered into a partnership with Baidu.com to provide metrics for search marketing campaigns through the Chinese-language search engine. "By integrating our search metrics with Omniture, we believe online marketers will not only be able to measure campaigns but also improve conversion by making the end-to-end search experience more relevant," said Haoyu Shen, Baidu.com's vice president of business operations, in a statement.

Baidu.com's share of Web search traffic in China as of the end of September 2007 was 73.6%; its share of search marketing spend was 60.8%, according to iResearch.

Omniture has cemented its position atop the industry in the last year through a string of acquisitions including an agreement to purchase Visual Sciences (formerly WebSideStory) for $394 million.