Google buys social ad firm Wildfire for a reported $250M

Google just acquired social media marketing company Wildfire.

AllThingsD reported “people familiar with the transaction” estimate Google bought the social ad business for $250 million, “plus earnouts, employment agreements, etc.”

Wildfire currently serves 16,000 customers, including 30 of the top 50 brands, and it reportedly raised $14 million since founding in 2008. Google will likely merge Wildfire into its ever-expanding social and advertising services to better entice marketers into buying either traditional or display ads for a variety of platforms— even direct rival Facebook.

Both companies took to their respective blogs today to confirm the buyout (below).

Related articles

• Meebo enters into acquisition agreement with Google (9to5google.com)
• Google goes hardware: ‘We’ve acquired Motorola Mobility’ (9to5google.com)
• WSJ: Google spending another $200M on YouTube channels (9to5google.com)
• Google unveils Gigabit Google Fiber Internet and TV service  (9to5google.com)

According to the official Google blog:

• We’re happy to share that the Wildfire team will be joining Google. Their co-founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, launched their startup just four years ago. Since then, they and their team have built a service that helps businesses like Virgin, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group and Spotify manage their social efforts across numerous social websites. It’s a platform for brands to manage their pages, apps, tweets, videos, sponsorships, ads, promotions and more, all in one place.
• The ultimate goal is better and fresher content, and more meaningful interactions. People today can make their voices heard in ways that were previously impossible, and Wildfire helps businesses uphold their end of the conversation (or spark a new one).

According to the Wildfire blog:

• Today we are about to start a new chapter of our story and we couldn’t be more excited to share the news: Wildfire is joining Google! We truly could not think of a more perfect home for Wildfire. It makes us so happy to know that joining with Google will make it easier for us to realize our vision of changing the way the world markets and enable us to live up to our commitment to make Wildfire an incredible place for our team and our customers.

Wildfire will continue to monitor brands’ social engagement and ad campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. It also plans to “operate as usual,” for now, with no changes to services and support.