Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is a measurement tool designed for digital marketers and businesses. It gives companies and online marketers data to create a view of their business, which can be used to drive decision-making around advertising, online product placement, marketing, product development and other critical endeavors.

The application includes both built-in and customizable reporting, calendaring functions and the ability to download information in various formats, including Word, Excel, PDF and HTML. Adobe Analytics also integrates with other Adobe tools or compatible third-party tools to feed relevant data into them.

Adobe Analytics
Developer(s)	Adobe Inc.
Initial release	2009 as Omniture
Operating system
Available in	Multilingual
Product Type	Software Suite, Cloud Applications
License	Software as a Service
Website	https://www.adobe.com/analytics/adobe-analytics.html

History of Adobe Analytics

Adobe announced the acquisition of Omniture in September 2009. Omniture was a web analytics and online marketing business. Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe at the time, noted that "optimization capabilities embedded in the creation tools" would allow online marketers and businesses to streamline content and application delivery.

The history of Adobe Analytics, from Omniture through today, is documented heavily in the company's own release notes, which are extensive. Adobe's documentation library houses release notes from 2012 through the present time for Adobe Analytics.

In March 2017, Adobe announced Adobe Experience Cloud at the Adobe Summit event in Las Vegas. Adobe Experience Cloud brought together a number of existing and new Adobe applications into a single solutions suite for the purpose of streamlining features for customers and integration. Adobe Experience Cloud included Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Advertising Cloud and Adobe Analytics Cloud.

Adobe updated the release notes for Adobe Analytics on April 16, 2020. At that time, it noted that the next new release had been rescheduled for May 21, 2020. It also provided some updates for Analytics administrators, including:

• An update to Customer Journey Analytics that added an Automated Dataset Backfill. The purpose of this update was to allow importing of historical data.
• The removal of "Segment applied in Data Warehouse check," which removes the warning if single segments apply in Data Warehouse requests.
• Some changes to how entries and exits are calculated in Workspace.

Adobe Analytics Features

Adobe Analytics has a number of features for web analytics, marketing analytics, attribution and predictive analytics, for businesses wanting to understand digital audiences, behavior and other metrics. Some features include :

• Multichannel data collection to support collection of data across a wide variety of sources, including, but not limited to, web-based kiosks, campaigns, email, client-server applications and mobile devices
• Custom variables that let businesses capture specific data that is customized according to their own business goals
• Processing rules for real-time segmentation of data
• Offline data integration that allows inclusion of disparate data sources from CRM solutions, loyalty programs or other data sets
• Data warehouse and data feed management options

Accolades and Awards

In 2019, Gartner named Adobe as one of the 17 leaders in its Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms report. It was the second year Adobe was named a "Leader with the highest ranking for 'completeness of vision.'"

Again in 2020, Adobe was named as a leader by the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms report. It also achieved the highest ranking for completeness of vision and second-highest ranking for ability to execute (coming in behind Salesforce in that ranking).

Adobe Analytics Challenge

Adobe hosts an annual analytics-focused business case competition for university students known as the Adobe Analytics Challenge. Participants use Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products during the competition. The students get access to real-world data from partner organizations to create analytics models. In the past, companies included Overstock.com, Sony PlayStation, Lenovo and T-Mobile.

Students work in teams of three. Competing universities over the years have included UC-Berkeley, NYU, University of Utah, Yale, and UCLA. The student teams work over the course of two weeks to analyze the digital data of a specific company and create a presentation. Teams then move through semi-final and finals rounds, judged by the companies taking part and Adobe’s Analytics product team. Winners receive cash prizes, and Adobe has hired more than 50 students from these competitions.

The cash prizes for the 2019 Adobe Analytics Challenge were:

• First place: $35,000
• Second place: $14,000
• Third place: $6,000
• Fourth place: $3,000
• Fifth place: $1,500
• Sixth place: $500

Faculty mentors for each finalist team receive free passes to the year's Adobe Summit event. The mentor of the winning team receives a paid trip to the Adobe Summit.