Cision buys Falcon.io, adding social management features to its earned media stack

A screen from Falcon.io

Communications firm Cision announced Thursday it is buying social media management platform Falcon.io.

For marketers, social management with PR. The move, CEO Kevin Akeryod said, adds social publishing, engagement, analytics and audience development for social media to the social listening capabilities on his company’s platform, which also provides pitch targeting and relationship management for media publications and the PR Newswire press release service.

Together, he said, these capabilities position Cision as the platform for earned media marketing, a space that he said has been left largely open because other major marketing clouds, like Adobe or Oracle, focus primarily on owned and paid media.

While the company considers social media, story sharing and PR to be part of earned media, Akeryod noted that it does not place ratings and reviews, employee communications or SEO in that category, as some others do.

Latest in a string of purchases. Falcon, with headquarters in Copenhagen and offices in four other cities around the world, provides marketers with features for publishing, listening, advertising, measuring and promoting engagement on social media. Cision said its new acquisition will continue as a standalone offering, and will also be integrated into the Cision Communications Cloud.

The Falcon acquisition is the latest in a string of purchases Cision has made, moving from its original position of providing PR services and tools to becoming an earned media cloud platform.

In 2014, the Chicago-based Cision bought social media analytics firm Visible Technologies, and it added social media management platform Viralheat in 2015. Also in 2015, it bought PR Newswire for $841 million.

A year ago, it completed the purchase of PRIME Research, which provides media measurement and ROI analysis for communications programs. Last August, it announced the acquisition of Berlin-based visual content performance platform ShareIQ, to track visual as well as textual content across the web.

Why you should care. For marketers, getting the word out through unpaid sources like media publications or organically-generated social media posts is often considered the most valuable form of promotion because of the credibility.

Cision’s efforts in actively binding the PR side to the online social and story sharing sides of marketing are part of creating what Akeryod calls “the definitive earned media cloud.” With the Falcon.io acquisition, Cision says it now offers a stack for generating and managing word-of-mouth through many of the key unpaid channels.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.