US Web Analytics Market To Reach Nearly $1B By 2014

June 1, 2009

Fueled by a need for marketing organizations to be more accountable to the business and a shift in marketing budgets' allocation for interactive channels, in order to match consumers' migration online, the US Web analytics market will grow to $953 million by 2014 — an impressive 17 percent compound annual growth rate.

"Market usage of Web analytics is in the awkward adolescence stage," said Forrester Senior Analyst John Lovett. "While the analytics market is beginning to develop, significant change is imminent, and maturity is still off in the distance."

The report notes that the introduction of highly capable free analytics tools is forcing a change in the value proposition among vendors, from a point solution to an underlying service embedded within broader marketing applications. The transformation will only have a positive effect as customer intelligence data will be shared more widely across organizations. Significant challenges remain however, including the need for human analysis of mountains of data, the ability to develop metrics that can tie to larger business objectives, and the necessity to integrate marketing and IT organizations in order to achieve true data integration.

"The democratization of data is looming," said Lovett. "Ultimately, Web analytics will become part of a broader array of integrated services supporting marketing professionals who focus on customer intelligence," said Lovett.