Omnicom, Oracle, and SAP Make Key Acquisitions

Omnicom’s DDB Worldwide bought London-based creative shop Adam & Eve for $94 million, according to news reports. Adam & Eve, which has 50 staffers, counts Google, Sony, The Telegraph, and Foster’s beer as clients. It marks Adam & Eve’s return to the holding company world after enduring a messy split and legal dispute during 2008 and 2009 with previous parent WPP.

Oracle is acquiring social media marketing company Vitrue for a reported $300 million. The purchase gives the enterprise software giant a Facebook-Twitter-YouTube-Google+ marketing piece to its significant portfolio. Former WebMD CMO Reggie Bradford founded Vitrue six years ago and has built the Atlanta-based company into a formidable name in the social media marketing ecosystem, opening offices in five U.S. cities and London. Clients include McDonald’s, Amex, Proctor & Gamble, AT&T, and Best Buy.

SAP, an Oracle competitor, will pay $4.3 billion for Ariba, which offers so-called collaborative commerce applications to large firms like Deutsche Bank and BHP Billiton. More generally, companies worldwide employ Ariba’s e-commerce and procurement platforms to buy and sell a variety of products and services. In 1999, it was one of the first B2B Internet services firm to go public.