Social Media Marketer Vitrue Has Been Bought By Oracle For $300 Million | Search Engine Marketing & Website Optimization

TechCrunch has discovered and confirmed that software giant Oracle has bought social marketing platform Vitrue for $300 million. [Update: A press release has confirmed the buy at an undisclosed price, though we know it to be $300 million.] As if Oracle didn’t offer enough products and services already, the acquisition will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients.

Vitrue had taken $33 million in funding over the years and grown to become one of the most popular solutions for big companies trying to win Facebook fans and push out marketing messages to the news feed. Vitrue, according to a source, was on course for revenues of just under $100 million this year. TC understands there was a lot of potential acquirers interested. Several bidders approached the company but Oracle was the most aggressive.

Oracle is no stranger to massive acquisitions. It bought talent management solution Taleo in February for $1.9 billion.

Beyond Facebook, Vitrue helps marketers manage their presences on Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and other platforms. One of the hallmarks of Vitrue has been it’s ability to rapidly integrate with new partners like Klout to give it talking points for dissuading clients from going to competitors. Vitrue is “nearly profitable” and was projected to reach profitability in this fiscal year, said our source. TechCrunch understands that Reggie Bradford, the CEO, will “very much remain part of the equation” when Vitrue becomes part of Oracle. His exact title to come.

The purchase continues the trend of large, old-world Internet marketing companies buying their way into social after being slow to adopt. Adobe bought social advertising provider Efficient Frontier for $400 million in November 2011, just a few months after Efficient Frontier had bought Facebook marketer and application developer Context Optional for a reported $50 million.

With time, social has proven too important to ignore. Rather than scrambling to build something and trying to pull brands away from established social marketers, Oracle will instantly gain a massive list of notable clients along with Vitrue. Oracle will also inherit Vitrue’s ongoing battle with competitors like Buddy Media, Wildfire, Involver, ThisMoment, and more for social marketing supremacy.

[Additional reporting by Josh Constine]

VITRUE
ORACLE CORPORATION

Vitrue offers the industry’s most scalable and secure cloud-based social marketing solution, enabling brands to harness the full marketing potential of social on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and emerging platforms.

The award-winning Vitrue SRM platform collectively manages more than one billion social relationships in over 100 countries across more than 4,500 social accounts for its clients.

For more information, visit www.vitrue.com.