• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 23, 2015

Media company Cision reported Monday the acquisition of Viralheat, a social tool provider, for an undisclosed sum. The deal helps Cision build out its support for content marketing and optimization into social media with monitoring engagement and data analytics.

The move follows Cision's acquisition of Visible Technologies in September 2014, which also focuses on social media that allows marketing professionals to take advertorials, branded and sponsored content directly to specific targeted audiences.

"The U.S. leads that trend, but we're seeing a similar trend in London and Stockholm," said Peter Granat, CEO at Cision, which supports media relations and communications specialists. "It's similar to the shift from publishing content through Web sites and blog posts or traditional and display advertising into native advertising."

Granat said the company will retire the Viralheat name this year and the technology will roll into the Cision brand to support business to business (B2B) marketers. 

Viralheat CEO Jeff Revoy and co-founders Raj Kadam and Vishal Sankhla will join Cision's senior management team. All the company's employees -- about 25 -- will join Cision's team of about 2,000, as the company expands availability of Viralheat into Canada, Sweden, U.K., France and Germany this year.

Revoy said the combined platform will give users more data to determine what content works best with specific influential users.

About half of Viralheat's employees focus on software development. Later this quarter, Cision plans to release new products supporting content marketing in social media, Grant said.