SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING M&A

Rivals Oracle and SAP have been active acquirers as of late. In our full year 2011 press release, Berkery Noyes mentioned SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors and Oracle’s acquisition of RightNow Technologies. Oracle and SAP’s M&A activity has continued into the first half of 2012, with a focus on social media marketing and the cloud.

SAP announced its acquisition of Ariba for $4.3 billion nearly two weeks ago. This qualifies as one of the largest transactions thus far in 2012. Ariba’s commerce solutions will allow SAP to offer collaborative business to business offerings in the cloud. Meanwhile, Oracle followed suit a day later by announcing its acquisition of Vitrue, reportedly for $300 million. Vitrue’s cloud-based solutions will strengthen Oracle’s social relationship platform.

Salesforce.com just made a similar transaction today. The company announced its acquisition of Buddy Media, a provider of social enterprise software, for approximately $689 million. Salesforce.com also acquired Radian6 Technologies about a year ago, which is used for social media monitoring and engagement. Buddy Media will be combined with Radian6 to solidify Salesforce’s comprehensive marketing cloud.

Buddy Media actually made an acquisition of its own back in February when it acquired Brighter Option. Brighter Option’s social ad management software is used to power advertising campaigns on Facebook. M&A in social media marketing appears promising, especially since businesses are showing that they want to modernize their marketing strategies. As a result, they are continuing to seek out and implement tools that will help them interact with their customers in a more personalized manner.