Adobe has beefed up its marketing cloud with the acquisition of a content curation and audience engagement platform.
The San Jose, Calif.-based software giant entered into a definitive agreement yesterday to acquire Livefyre and will integrate it into the centerpiece of its eight-component marketing cloud: the web content management platform Adobe Experience Manager. The acquisition is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to close within the next months. The companies did not disclose terms.
Livefyre, based in San Francisco, will allow marketers using Adobe Experience Manager to curate and publish user-generated content from social networks into digital experiences. Adobe officials anticipate the Livefyre-generated content to be available across all eight digital marketing solutions: Analytics, Audience Manager, Campaign, Experience Manager, Media Optimizer, Primetime, Social and Target.
'Branded Experiences'
“With this acquisition our customers will be able to unify the best social media content with branded experiences created in Adobe Creative Cloud and community-driven content in Adobe Behance and Adobe Stock,” Aseem Chandra, vice president of Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target, said in a statement.
Jordan Kretchmer, CEO and founder of Livefyre, promised the Livefyre platform will give brands the ability to deliver "a breadth of impactful, highly personalized digital experiences. The addition of Livefyre to Adobe Marketing Cloud will bring content capabilities to Adobe customers that are unparalleled in the industry."
Adobe officials claim that bringing together branded and curated social content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other major social networks will accelerate content marketing and "open a unique opportunity for marketers to further drive customer engagement and conversion."
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Livefyre customers already include CNN, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Media Group, Dow Jones Wall Street Journal, Hallmark, Huff Post Live, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, Major League Baseball, Mashable, National Geographic, News Corp, the PGA Tour, Sears, Tourism Australia, Univision, Warner Music Group and others.
Two Powerful Platforms
It's no secret this digital marketing acquisition combines two platforms on top of major industry analysts' radar. Forrester Research routinely taps Adobe as a leader in the Web CMS and digital experience fields and named Livefyre among the seven leaders for social depth platforms.
MyPOV: someone asked me yesterday why @adobe had not ramped up M&A. Breaking: @adboe buys @Livefyre https://t.co/FNKP9Rplsi #Marketing #CMO
— R Ray Wang (王瑞光) (@rwang0) May 3, 2016
Cathy McKnight, co-founder and VP of Consulting and Operations at Digital Clarity Group, said the acquisition will enable Adobe's customers to increase their content velocity across the Adobe marketing cloud.
She said the acquisition fills a gap in Adobe's ability to offer amore complete digital experience solution, and may give the company "an edge over some of their competition who still rely on partners to deliver the capabilities."
"It will also allow customers to build a stronger pipeline through better management of all types of content: brand generated, social, user generated, and more.Branded user generated content has a huge influence on brand-related decisions and makes for some of the most engaging content – think customers' product/service reviews on testimonial pages — so it needs to be a part of a company’s content strategy," she said.
Adobe's acquisition of Livefyre represents its most significant in the digital marketing space since 2013 when Adobe acquired email marketing provider Neolane and turned it into Campaign in the marketing cloud. Adobe bought its way into digital marketing with the acquisitions of Omniture (Analytics, Target), Day Software (AEM) and others.
