Google Snaps Up Wildfire

Google is adding to its giant advertising business.

The company announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire Wildfire, a social media marketing firm, for an undisclosed sum. Founded four years ago, Wildfire helps brands manage their social campaigns across sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It has roughly 16,000 customers, including Spotify, Virgin, Amazon and Unilever.

“With Wildfire, we're looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services,”Jason Miller, a Google product management director said on the company's blog post on Tuesday. “We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.

The deal for Wildfire comes as many brands struggle to build and manage their footprints on social networks. Start-ups like Wildfire help corporations engage their consumers and track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. The addition of Wildfire may bolster Google's own social network, Google+, and provide key insights about rival platforms, such as Facebook. According to a blog post on Wildfire's Web site, the company will continue to partner with other networks and “operate as usual,” despite its new ownership.

“We believe that over time the combination of Wildfire and Google can lead to a better platform for managing all digital media marketing,” Wildfire's founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard said in the joint blog post. “For now, we remain focused on helping brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and across all social service.”