Home Social Media Google to Buy Wildfire for $250M. What Will Facebook Do?

Google to Buy Wildfire for $250M. What Will Facebook Do?

SHARE:

wildfireSocially persistent Google will buy Wildfire Interactive for approximately $25o million. The deal comes just a few months after Google reportedly sniffed around Wildfire competitor Buddy Media, before Buddy sold to Salesforce.

(Read Google’s blog post)

The deal hasn’t closed  but sources tell AdExchanger that Google doesn’t expect the need for regulatory review and hopes to finalize things in short order.

Clients like Virgin and Spotify use Wildfire’s tools to manage presence and advertising on social platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Soaring above them all is Facebook, and around Facebook swirls the big question about this deal.

Wildfire is a preferred marketing developer for Facebook’s Insights, Apps, and Pages qualification areas. Facebook now faces a decision about whether to revoke that certification to prevent Google from gaining access to its platform APIs, its infrastructure, and its advertiser data. Doing so would be in keeping with Facebook’s history of Google-blocking. Over the last two years, Facebook has denied requests by Google’s DoubleClick to be certified though its third party ad tracking program. More recently it excluded Google DSP Invite Media from the nascent Facebook Exchange RTB marketplace, while opening it up to nine rival DSPs.

But the Facebook awkwardness doesn’t end there. Not only does Wildfire access and make money on the Facebook platform, Facebook is a direct client. As CEO Victoria Ransom told AdExchanger in June, “They use Wildfire’s technology to manage over 30 of their own brand pages, which is exciting for us, and a great validation.”

Facebook hasn’t responded to an information request, but it’s probably a good bet Facebook will at the very least migrate its internal Pages management away from Google. It will be a waiting game to see if Wildfire is shown the door in other ways as well.

It’s also interesting to consider a possible overlap between Wildfire and Meebo, which Google agreed to buy last month. Meebo is being integrated with Google+, where Meebo’s experience developing the Meebo Bar social plugin across hundreds of websites will enhance the struggling Google+’s ties to publishers.

Underlying both deals is content – the ways it’s shared by users, publishers, and brands. Google wants to be as close to that sharing as possible, ideally by owning the user experience.

But if that fails, hey, there’s always the ecosystem.

Must Read

HUMAN Expands Its IVT Detection Tool Kit With A New Product For Advertisers, Not Platforms

HUMAN has recently started complementing its bid request analysis by analyzing the time between when a bot clicks an ad and when the landing page loads. Now it’s offering the solution to individual advertisers.

Index Exchange Launches A Data Marketplace For Sell-Side Curation

Through Index Exchange’s data vendor marketplace, curators gain access to third-party data sets without needing their own integrations.

Can Publishers Trust The Trade Desk’s New Wrapper?

TTD says OpenAds is not just a reaction to Prebid’s TID change, but a new model for fairer, more transparent ad auctions. So what does the DSP need to do to get publishers to adopt its new auction wrapper?

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Scott Spencer’s New Startup Wants To Help Users Monetize Their Online Advertising Data

What happens when an ad tech developer partners with a cybersecurity expert to start a new company? You end up with a consumer product that is both a privacy software service and a programmatic advertising ID.

Former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya speaks to AdExchanger Managing Editor Allison Schiff at Programmatic IO NY 2025.

Advertisers Probably Shouldn’t Target Teens At All, Cautions Former FTC Commissioner

Alvaro Bedoya shared his qualms with digital advertising’s more controversial targeting tactics and how kids use gen AI and social media.

Wall Street Turned Against Ad Tech – But May Learn To Love It Again

What can pureplay ad tech companies do to clean up their rep on the Street?