Google bought the Wildfire digital marketing platform back in 2012 and has maintained it as a separate unit since then, but now Google will integrate Wildfire into other existing corporate platforms.
The announcement was made by Victoria Ransom, Wildfire's product management director, in a March 13 post on the Wildfire by Google Blog.
"In 2012, Wildfire joined Google with the aim of helping businesses improve their digital marketing across all channels, including social marketing," wrote Ransom. "Together, our goal has been to help marketers bring together insights from their social campaigns alongside insights from the rest of their digital marketing. Last June, we took an important first step towards this goal by starting to build Wildfire technology right into our ad technology platforms."
Since that time, the decision has been made to push that integration further, she wrote. "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."
In June 2013, Google bolstered its DoubleClick digital advertising and marketing platform with some key upgrades, including a new ad campaign manager and social media integration with Wildfire. The new features were aimed at helping online advertisers use digital media more effectively and successfully, according to Google.
The first part of the improvements was the replacement of the former DoubleClick for Advertisers interface with a new DoubleClick Campaign Manager, which Google called the biggest upgrade to the platform's core ad server in the 15 years since it was begun. The new social media features have been added to the DoubleClick platform through integration that's being built using Wildfire's social media platform, which Google acquired in 2012.
Google often updates its ad platforms and services to help improve them for digital marketers.
In September 2013, Google launched a new DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) Academy to provide more advice and self-paced training for its DoubleClick advertising service customers to reap even better results from their online ads in Google Search and elsewhere. The online academy provides help for general questions as well as more detailed, specific inquiries. The online DFA Academy is a self-paced learning path designed to guide users through core help articles and online training courses. It is designed around "checklists" that participants can use to mark their progress and new competencies before moving on to the next lessons and skills.
The lessons cover the basic core curriculum, including DFA Fundamentals eLearning and certification, as well as details on how to implement a new DFA account or advertiser, wrote Payne. Also detailed are topics such as using and troubleshooting tags, creatives and more, as well as information for expert users through the DFA Personal Trainer for Advanced Users.
The advanced topics include details on integrations with DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Tag Manager, as well as other features. Lessons on tips and best practices for trafficking DoubleClick Rich Media in your DFA account are also included to help users get as much from their DoubleClick investments as possible, wrote Payne.
Google acquired DoubleClick after making a $3.1 billion bid for the company back in 2007. DoubleClick provided digital ad and search leader Google with plenty of new firepower, including the ability to serve graphical display ads in addition to the company's text-based links.
DoubleClick's technology lets advertisers and publishers deliver ads once they have agreed to terms, and provides statistics relating to those ads. Privacy and Internet advocates were not happy about the acquisition of DoubleClick and its approval by the Federal Trade Commission at the time; they cited concerns that it would give Google too much power over the data around search.
When DoubleClick was first on the market in 2007, reports circulated that Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL were also interested in buying the company, according to an eWEEK article.
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