If there’s ever been a clearer sign of the importance of understanding your audience, look to today’s announcement by Adobe that it is acquiring Comscore’s technology – commonly called DAX – Digital Analytix.

In a world where marketing channels are constantly changing and blurring lines, such as Social with Local with Mobile, it’s now more important than ever to get a full view of the value of not just your content, but your ‘value position’ with your audience.   While Adobe Analytics is a very powerful reporting to, it’s still pretty tough to get to that ‘value position’ with just Adobe Analytics alone.

This acquisition, I contend, means amazing things for the future of marketers and data analysts trying to prove not just ROI, but bottom line value of the marketing initiatives they are implementing and if their efforts to reach and influence audiences is really happening.  Currently we’re forced to move from tool to tool to acquire the kind of data this acquisition could give us. One tool gives us web traffic data and event tracking insights another tool gives us demographic information and kick butt video tracking.  By combining these in one tool, a world of opportunities now opens up (not to mention time saving!).  In other words, with this purchase Adobe just positioned itself as the juggernaut in the industry — take that Google.

Allowing for More Emphasis on OmniChannel Marketing

With this acquisition of Comscore’s DAX technology, not only do you add in a significantly improved video tracking technology but you are now also getting insights into audience demographics that can give you unparalleled data access, insights and visibility into the characteristics of your user base.  This acquisition, if integrated in a way that is seamless and beneficial to Adobe’s and Dax’s user bases, has just up the ante in the world of OmniChannel Marketing.  Marketers are going to have way more insights into their audiences cross channel experiences by combining these two technologies.

With so many customer journey possibilities out there, this acquisition means that there are tools that can assist marketers in understanding much more than beyond a simple website button click, form submission or share.  Having been trained and worked with both of these technologies, the ‘data geek’ in me always wondered about the possibilities of combing these tools and their data.  Unfortunately, it has been too expensive a proposition for companies to deploy both technologies at once (I’ve only seen instance of either DAX or Adobe Analytics implemented).

Now?

Now, the data geek in me is giggly with anticipation of what is to come. I’ve got the wonderment of a wide eyed kid in a toy store staring at the legos and wondering what these pieces are going to allow me to build that’s better, not just for companies, but for audiences and customers alike.