Omniture Adds New Tool for YouTube, Viral Video Monitoring

Omniture, creator of online business optimization software, is releasing a new version of Omniture SiteCatalyst that allows users to measure the spread of viral video across video-sharing sites.

SiteCatalyst is a component of the company’s previous release, the Omniture Online Marketing Suite, which also includes several applications such as Visitor Acquisition Applications, designed to streamline customer acquisition, and Conversion Applications, to allow marketers to test key messages, target customer segments and analyze customers’ behavioral data to leverage merchandising strategies.

The one-stop application for measuring the impact of viral videos spares users from needing to check sites such as YouTube individually. Metrics on the dashboard provide information such as the number of consumers who have viewed a particular video, as well as ad performance associated with particular videos.

Online video is of increased interest to the enterprise as a potential source of ad revenue. Google has been attempting to monetize YouTube as a way of blunting that site’s hundreds of millions of dollars a year in operating costs, even as Hulu, which exclusively displays studio-generated content, migrates onto the Apple iPhone and iPod touch as a downloadable application.

Cloud-based computing platforms that deliver SAAS (software as a service) to customers have assumed an increasing prevalence within the enterprise, as companies ranging from Omniture and Salesforce to Google and Amazon have been aggressively pushing into that particular arena. In addition to popular video-streaming sites such as YouTube, other sites such as Facebook and Twitter are also being integrated into the enterprise as tools for trend-monitoring. Media such as video often spreads through these sites in a viral manner.

Salesforce recently integrated Twitter and Facebook into its Service Cloud SAAS solution, the better for its clients to monitor the adoption and discussion of new products.