We consult companies using either tool (and have no obligation to either vendor, though we will admit a bias towards omniture). Sean has some good info, but a bit of misinformation as well. For points #2 and #4- omniture allows you to choose which kind of cookie to use- 3rd party, 1st party, or a hybrid (friendly 3rd party). This is very flexible for cross-domain reporting. Nor is it true that "with SC each domain gets its own tag"- no clue where someone got that idea.
It is true, though, if you want to use 1st party cookies on an SSL site you have to set it up, and while the process has quite a few steps, the overall amount of work involved isn't that high- I haven't seen it be an impediment for many companies. And we haven't seen any cases where adobe has mismanaged those certificates- the incident with paypal was not the fault of adobe, but (by paypal's own admission) "due to the recent implementation of Microsoft's Extended Validation certificates".
Webtrends can use cookies, IPs, or query params to track a user but none of those methods- used by any analytics vendor- is fool proof. IP addresses can be dynamic, cookies can be deleted, params are a pain to manage. And there will always be discrepancies between those methods.
In our opinion, set up of omniture can be as complicated or simple as you want it to be, but with complexity comes a LOT of flexibility. You choose what parameter to track your campaigns with (and only need one tracking code- any info you have about that tracking code can be applied retroactively without exposing your users to huge long URLs with a billion params.) You choose what to capture in your reports and how to group that data (and if 150 custom variables isn't enough, you may want to rethink how you are using your data- "data hoarding" is a huge industry problem that creates work without providing value.)
Webtrends definitely has prettier reporting and more powerful ways of getting data in or out (and their facebook integration is fantastic), but ad-hoc reporting for a new business question can be a huge pain if you haven't planned ahead just right (as I was recently told, setting up a conversion funnel for a new functionailty we were implementing was a simple as 30 steps!). Webtrend's log file tracking technology was amazing and state-of-the-art in 2001 but they aren't keeping up with their competitors for innovation in tracking. For instance, in item 5 from Sean, he states "Omniture’s infrastructure was built purely for real-time analysis. Thus, the system is pod-based and analyzes in a linear fashion—collection, processing and rendering are all part of a single, linear process." This WAS true but changed with sc15. Omniture is evolving as the needs of the industry are evolving.Forrester recently, as an unbiased 3rd party, did a review of all the tools and how they compare: see the Forrester Wave report for Web Analytics for q4 of
It is true, though, if you want to use 1st party cookies on an SSL site you have to set it up, and while the process has quite a few steps, the overall amount of work involved isn't that high- I haven't seen it be an impediment for many companies. And we haven't seen any cases where adobe has mismanaged those certificates- the incident with paypal was not the fault of adobe, but (by paypal's own admission) "due to the recent implementation of Microsoft's Extended Validation certificates".
Webtrends can use cookies, IPs, or query params to track a user but none of those methods- used by any analytics vendor- is fool proof. IP addresses can be dynamic, cookies can be deleted, params are a pain to manage. And there will always be discrepancies between those methods.
In our opinion, set up of omniture can be as complicated or simple as you want it to be, but with complexity comes a LOT of flexibility. You choose what parameter to track your campaigns with (and only need one tracking code- any info you have about that tracking code can be applied retroactively without exposing your users to huge long URLs with a billion params.) You choose what to capture in your reports and how to group that data (and if 150 custom variables isn't enough, you may want to rethink how you are using your data- "data hoarding" is a huge industry problem that creates work without providing value.)
Webtrends definitely has prettier reporting and more powerful ways of getting data in or out (and their facebook integration is fantastic), but ad-hoc reporting for a new business question can be a huge pain if you haven't planned ahead just right (as I was recently told, setting up a conversion funnel for a new functionailty we were implementing was a simple as 30 steps!). Webtrend's log file tracking technology was amazing and state-of-the-art in 2001 but they aren't keeping up with their competitors for innovation in tracking. For instance, in item 5 from Sean, he states "Omniture’s infrastructure was built purely for real-time analysis. Thus, the system is pod-based and analyzes in a linear fashion—collection, processing and rendering are all part of a single, linear process." This WAS true but changed with sc15. Omniture is evolving as the needs of the industry are evolving.Forrester recently, as an unbiased 3rd party, did a review of all the tools and how they compare: see the Forrester Wave report for Web Analytics for q4 of
