Applied Insights falls into the gaping Foviance maw

Ok, it’s not quite Omniture acquiring TouchClarity, but I was delighted to read yesterday that my old pals at Foviance have secured the services of none other than Neil Mason through the acquisition of his company, Applied Insights. Neil (whose ClickZ column you should read) has been flying the flag for web analytics – especially from a marketing-effectiveness point of view – for many years, and he’ll be a great asset to the Foviance team. Congratulations Neil and Paul. Neil’s partner and co-founder of Applied Insights, John McConnell, will leave to pursue independent interests.

The only note of sadness for me in this announcement is that the background to the acquisition is the change in the focus of Foviance’s web analytics efforts away from a WebAbacus-oriented technology/consulting solution to a services-only offering based around Omniture, WebTrends and the like. Of course, this is precisely the right thing for Foviance to do, since the web analytics market is now firmly consolidating around the major players; but I’m sad because WebAbacus (which I spent so many years on) isn’t one of them. But I like to think that its influence in the industry lives on.