In 2012, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) purchased social media platform, Wildfire for $350 million. Google wanted a tasty slice of the Facebook advertising pie. Acquiring Wildfire gave them that piece because the company helps clients manage their Facebook pages.
Wildfire helped give Google a better idea of the inner workings of Facebook in addition to the type of information it could provide marketers. Furthermore, Wildfire came along with high-end clientele including, Cisco, Amazon, DQ, Gap, Jamba Juice, and McCann. However, yesterday, Wildfire shared it would no longer sign up new customers.
So, what happened? Wildfire reported that Google will integrate Wildfire’s offerings into its adtech platform. However, neither company has come out to confirm or deny this information. Moreover, last year, Google asserted it would combine Wildfire’s social analytics with its DoubleClick, web-wide ad buying platform. This was to enable clients to use social data for targeting their ads at any location.
As a company, Wildfire only held Facebook “Insights” and “Pages” badges. This means it only had the capabilities of taking care of audience information and brand pages. Wildfire is not an ad buyer or a marketing app developer.
As a result, Facebook has commented that it only wants to work with companies that bring in ad revenue in the form of purchasing ads. This is in opposition of companies who simply manage brand pages. The largest social media marketers usually hold three or four Facebook badges, such as “Apps,” “Pages,” “Insights” and “Ads.” Wildfire only holds two.
Regarding this news, Wildfire founder, Victoria Ransom released this blog post last night, “The Wildfire Social Marketing Suite, which helps businesses manage their posts and content on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, will continue to be supported, but further investments will be limited: we won’t be building new features or signing up new customers. Our focus will be on integrating Wildfire’s technology with our ad technology platform and building new features that enable marketers to use social insights to improve their marketing campaigns.”
