If the pundits on Wall Street talk about your industry, will the rest of the world listen?

Good news for the analytics sector today. With all the talk of Web 2.0, YouTube, Google, Yahoo, and others, it’s nice to see that someone is paying attention to the web analytics sector.

It’s not just the content creators that are making waves these days. The people that measure and track how that content is used are also causing a nice ripple in the financial markets.

CNN reports that Wall Street is sitting up and taking notice of the performance gains of companies like Omniture and WebSide Story, as they continue to extend their measurement platforms and reach into the latest Internet boom.

What’s surprising about this is the validation that the web analytics industry is starting to receive from sources outside its own walls. It wasn’t too long ago that the investment community was bashing Omniture for burning through $40 million in funding trying to bolster its workforce and infrastructure. In mid-2006 they looked like another IPO-focused tech company with little or nothing to show for the infusion except more people and a dwindling client list.

WebSide Story has made some noise, too. Their acquisition of Visual Sciences from the grips of tight relationships with Uncle Sam and the men in black has moved from a “how-do-we-really-sell-this-product” to an earnings rainmaker for HBX. Wall Street is predicting 31% earnings growth next year, and 35% average yearly growth for the next few years after that.

All numbers aside, this obviously is good news for shareholders of both Omniture and WebSide Story. But the real question is, now that Wall Street has given a stamp of approval on these types of services, does that mean that web analytics has now been validated for the rest of the online world?

Increases in earnings and stock price can be indicative of a company’s ability to provide tangible results for its clients and a valuable set of tools and services that impart value to digital marketing intelligence. Whether that intelligence impacts day to day tactics or longer term strategies, it is clear that the growth of these companies directly relates to the growth they’re bringing to their clients.

Will this financial success be enough to cause CEO’s, Directors, and other decision makers to expand their digital strategies to include marketing intelligence? Wall Street seems to think so.

The Other Online Ad Boom via [CNNMoney.com]