July 17, 2012 ONLINE AND MOBILE M&A: LARGE PLAYERS MAKING ACQUISITIONS

Berkery Noyes recently released its first half 2012 trend report Online and Mobile Industry. Large Online & Mobile companies – notably Groupon, Facebook, and Google – were active acquirers in first half 2012. Of these three, Groupon was the most acquisitive with eight transactions. Facebook was close behind with seven acquisitions, whereas Google had five. 

M&A volume in social media marketing, examined as a subset of the E-Marketing & Search segment, increased fourfold compared to first half 2011 and 30 percent relative to the prior half year period. This included some high value deals in first half 2012, such as Salesforce.com’s announced acquisition of Buddy Media for $745 million and Oracle’s announced acquisition of Vitrue for $300 million. 

Regarding other notable social enterprise transactions in first half 2012, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Yammer for $1.2 billion, Salesforce.com acquired Thinkfuse and ChoicePass, and Oracle acquired Collective Intellect.

According to Berkery Noyes Managing Director Mary Jo Zandy, “Companies committed to customer relationship management (CRM) appear keen on integrating social media with their existing marketing platforms by acquiring startups. The traditional CRM model is being replaced by a more interactive process in which businesses aim to listen to what their consumers are saying in real time.”