Oracle fattened its marketing cloud today by acquiring a cloud-based software company that allows marketers to test, target and personalize what a customer sees on a web page or mobile app.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based marketing cloud software giant bought New York City-based Maxymiser for an undisclosed sum. Maxymiser claims 20 billion customer experiences per month for brands such as Allianz, HSBC, Lufthansa, Tommy Hilfiger and Wyndham, according to officials involved in the acquisition.

Big-Player Battle

Oracle is in a never-ending battle for its share of the big marketing cloud pie with software forces such as Adobe, Salesforce and IBM. The big players are piecing together their clouds through acquisitions, which some people love and others criticize for integration challenges.

Oracle has steadily been picking up components for its marketing cloud through acquisitions like Eloqua (marketing automation),  Responsys (email marketing), BlueKai (data management) and Datalogix (analytics).

Though the terms of today's Oracle deal and some others are unknown, Oracle's spent reportedly close to $4 billion on these four deals alone. Salesforce has made similar marketing tech acquisitions (ExactTarget), and IBM (Silverpop) and Adobe (Neolane) certainly have not done all their innovation in-house, either. 

Billions of dollars spent on acquisitions — and a trend we've likely not seen the end of.

What Oracle Sees in Maxymiser

“Companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways to differentiate their brands while increasing both ROI and loyalty based on optimized customer experiences,” Thomas Kurian, president of product development at Oracle, said in a statement. “Together with Maxymiser, Oracle Marketing Cloud enables enterprises to stop guessing and start delivering what customers want across all digital channels and devices.”

Tim Brown, CEO at Maxymiser, said his team's platform helps enterprises to use data science to systematically test, discover and predict what customers want and deliver uniquely tailored experiences. 

Maxymiser isn't new to this industry. Often mentioned in the same breath as Optimizely and Monetate, it received major kudos in the 2013 Forrester Wave report for online testing vendors, even edging out a now-direct competitor in Adobe. Adobe was a leader over Maxymiser in the 2010 report.

Forrester researchers gave their top nod to Maxymiser among all online testing vendors in 2013 due to its “consistently strong capabilities across all categories of online testing functionality.” In particular, Forrester singled out Maxymiser’s reporting and analysis functionality, as well as mobile and social testing. 

At the time, Forrester noted users who need a balance of professional services and advanced technology will most benefit from Maxymiser, but cautioned the vendor must “execute on its vision for comprehensive optimization and visitor data management” to maintain its category lead.