Wildfire owner and CEO Victoria Ransom

Ever since it bought the display-ad portion system DoubleClick in 2007, Google has been steadily shopping up more pieces of the online ad-buying routine over the core hunt ads. But it has had one outrageous hole: amicable ads. With the arise of promotion on Facebook and Twitter, Google has been left totally out of the design when it comes to charity marketers a way to get in front of people when they’re on amicable networks and use information on what they’re doing there to urge the aptitude of the ads.

Today, it started to remedy that situation with the acquisition of Wildfire Interactive, which brands such as Virgin and Gilt Groupe conduct their social-media marketing, from fixation ads to handling fan pages. I’m checking to see what the undisclosed squeeze cost was, though AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka says his sources tell him it was around $250 million.

It’s not nonetheless certain either Wildfire, which reportedly was also courted by Facebook itself, will get Google deeply into the amicable ad game, since fan pages, promotions, and messaging, not ads, were the categorical concentration for the company. But Google now will get entrance to lots of information on user function on amicable sites, providing an even broader perspective of the communication between users and brands than it’s already removing around the Google+ amicable network and, of course, the YouTube video service.

What’s more, Google is in the inexperienced position of entrance in late to the amicable selling merger frenzy. Salesforce.com snatched Buddy Media, another amicable media selling firm, from Google’s clutches for $689 million in early June. Oracle bought Vitrue in May for $300 million.

And it’s not transparent how Facebook, so distant the big kahuna of social, will respond. It no doubt would entice antitrust inspection if it unexpected began creation it harder for Wildfire to attend in Facebook marketing. But Facebook binds parsimonious control of the platform, so this pierce seems expected to put the two companies in even closer combat. As it happens, Facebook uses Wildfire to conduct 30 of the possess code pages, creation this understanding all the more interesting. (Oh–and Wildfire employs Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s younger sister, Arielle Zuckerberg, who now will turn a Googler.)

But it’s transparent from Google’s blog post on the purchase that it intends to hide Wildfire’s facilities into the display-ad “stack” of technologies:

The ultimate idea is better and fresher content, and more suggestive interactions. People today can make their voices listened in ways that were formerly impossible, and Wildfire helps businesses defend their end of the review (or hint a new one).

In a complex and changing landscape, businesses want to conduct and magnitude these efforts in an integrated way. We’ve been operative towards this end for some time. For example, Google Analytics helps businesses measure the contribution of hundreds of amicable sites; our Admeld service has helped to offer ads in Facebook developers’ amicable apps; and our DoubleClick platform enables clients to run and magnitude ads opposite amicable websites. On Google+, brands use services like Vitrue, Buddy Media and others to conduct their pages, with many more to come.

Wildfire had lifted $14 million in funding. It has 400 employees.