Accenture buys Memetrics and Maxamine

More news from the big-dog-eat-small-dog world of online marketing & optimization: Accenture (specifically, its Online Marketing Sciences group) announced yesterday that it's to buy both Memetrics and Maxamine. The Memetrics deal has already closed; the Maxamine deal will likely close within 30 days.

I know the guys at Memetrics and Maxamine pretty well - they're both great little companies and this is a great result (coincidentally, both hail from Australia). Memetrics has been playing in the Enterprise MVT space for several years, with some significant successes at large clients like Amex, whilst Maxamine provides testing & validation services for sites, in particular, checking whether a site's instrumentation tags (e.g. for web analytics, or ad serving) are correctly deployed. Maxamine has been an Omniture partner for years - I wouldn't have been surprised to see them swallowed up by the Omnivore, in fact.

The acquisitions tell us that Accenture is serious about helping companies bridge the gap between their marketing management (media buying, campaign management) and their site management & optimization. Few agencies have the nous or client relationship depth to do this - media/creative agencies tend to focus on the media side, whilst web agencies stick with the site. As a result there are still millions and millions of dollars falling down the cracks between brilliantly executed campaigns and brilliantly executed (but totally unconnected) sites. It'll be interesting to see how Accenture fares.