Oracle buys cloud marketer Vitrue for $300m

Acquisition pits Oracle against Salesforce, once again

Software giant Oracle has purchased cloud-based marketing company Vitrue for a reported $300m (£192m).

The company's service enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Google+.

"Vitrue's social media SaaS [software-as-a-service] marketing applications help customers amplify their social community engagement by giving marketers the ability to develop campaigns from global to local, across multiple social networks and devices, and publish content that engages fans and drives leads," said Oracle in a statement.

The company claims that its platform collectively manages more than one billion social relationships in over 100 countries across more than 4,500 social accounts for its clients.

Oracle said that the acquisition was driven by changes in the world of marketing, where companies increasingly need to manage campaigns across a variety of online social media.

"The proliferation of social media and an increased demand by consumers to engage with brands across multiple social channels is driving chief marketing officers to look for an integrated social marketing platform," said Thomas Kurian, executive vice-president, Oracle Development. Vitrue, he added, would integrate with Oracle's commerce offerings.

The acquisition marks a further battle in Oracle's war against SAP. Earlier this week, SAP acquired Ariba for $4.3bn (£2.7bn) in a deal that is expected to provoke a response from Oracle.

More directly, Vitrue's service competes head-on with Salesforce, which added social media marketing to its suite of cloud-based services in December 2011.

The Atlanta, Georgia company was founded in 2006 and received $17m (£10.8m) in a third round of funding in February 2011. It has received a total of $33m (£21m) in funding since it was founded - representing a healthy 1,000 per cent return for investors.