Omniture IPO Offers All Angles

The company is riding two trends that have been popular among investors in the past couple of years. It's a key player in Web analytics, the study of online behavior with an eye to improving a site's experience or a company's marketing ability.

But Omniture also employs an on-demand model, handling all the data and software on its servers so that its clients need just a browser to access it.

A report from Forrester Research earlier this year listed Omniture as one of the four leaders of the Web analytics industry, and the only one of them that is publicly traded. The others -- WebTrends, Coremetrics and Visual Sciences -- each had their own strengths, but the report's author, Nate Root, praised Omniture for "its all-around solid product and training offerings."

"Omniture is poised to challenge WebTrends for market leadership within the next two years," Root wrote. "All-around solid offerings in product, service and support make the vendor a safe bet for large enterprises that want to deploy Web analytics broadly within their organization."

Other publicly traded rivals, such as WebSideStory and NetRatings , as well as IBM's SurfAid, received lower rankings.

Meanwhile, Omniture was signing up big-name clients like Time Warner's(TWX Quote) America Online, Apple , eBay and Major League Baseball.

Omniture's revenue has more than doubled for three years in a row. And the first quarter showed it's on track to make it four in a row: Revenue in the quarter rose to $16.4 million from $8 million. That quarter also showed operating expenses, which went from 69% of revenue in 2004 to 93% in 2005, fell back to 79% in the first quarter of 2006.

So, there you have the portrait of Omniture as a pretty young girl. But squint and concentrate a little more and the tired old woman starts to become more apparent.