Marko Hurst

Yahoo! announced yesterday that it was acquiring IndexTools, (original post). Having been build from the ground up for flexibility and data analysis IndexTools is a robust analytics platform, i.e. it is superior (and a bit more complex) than Google Analytics. The platform itself offers less canned analysis, which then puts the hones on analysts to think more about their data, to help discover actionable insights. Since Yahoo, Google, & MSN are such fierce competitors in today’s web space I imagine that Yahoo! will offer this as a “Freemium” solution, where some functionality is offered to small and mid-sized businesses at no cost and incremental services will be available at a reasonable cost.

Competition Heats Up

How will this acquisition affect Google Analytics & Microsoft’s Ad Center? Yahoo!’s Michael Wexler, unofficially states that they’re approaching the market from a different angle. The goal, he as he describe it is to provide all users of Yahoo! products, (development, advertiser, shopping, and end user products) to analyze usage data in a comprehensive way to derive optimal use. He goes on to compliment Google Analytics’ success as a basic tool, but criticizes that it’s not designed for people that “really want to understand their data, nor is it aimed at the variety of ways people can work with Google (it ignores all that API stuff, for example).” Wexler views IndexTools as “the foundational start to understanding not just marketing and its impact on site behavior, but how to understand you online site usage to achieve your goals…”

The interesting play here is how this will undercut the other free offerings from Goolgle & MSN, but I expect it to have little impact if any to the enterprise solutions. On the other hand Eric Peterson has different take on the matter. As Eric puts it “this one is potentially the permanent game changer.” Time will tell.

Does anyone still use Coremetrics ? Of course they do, I just haven’t had a client in some time know that uses Coremetrics, they all use . With the acquiring of so many in the competitors in this playing field these days I was wondering what Coremetrics would be doing to stay in the game. And then came this.

Coremetrics announced today that it had secured $60 million in funding from 3i.

“This new round of funding will enable us to significantly enhance our already strong historical performance,” said Joe Davis, CEO of Coremetrics. “There is an unlimited market opportunity for us as more online businesses see the advantage of using our marketing optimization platform to grow their companies. With current sales win rates approaching 70 percent, we see a tremendous opportunity to accelerate growth by leveraging our existing product leadership position with increased marketing investment and quota carrying sales force.”

“3i understands the digital marketing space well and Coremetrics’ strong industry position provides an excellent opportunity to join a market leader as an investor and strategic advisor,” said Al Yau, Director of 3i. “We are excited to be part of their continued success by leveraging our broad international network to accelerate growth, especially in Europe and Asia.”

“We are as bullish on the company’s prospects today as we were when we funded their first round and are excited to be part of the next phase of Coremetrics’ growth,” said Dan Nova, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners.

So here’s to Coremetrics staying in the game and going after their competition with a renewed vengeance!