• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 21, 2015

Adding a social layer to its customer experience management suite, Clarabridge has acquired Engagor -- a Belgian-based provider of real-time social customer service and engagement services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded 2011, Engagor has established itself with a social listening and engagement platform for marketers and customer-care organizations. These capabilities will be added to Clarabridge’s existing ability to collect, analyze, and activate customer feedback data across channels.

Engagor brings with it a stable of 360 clients, including Volvo, Ikea, Pepsi and Nintendo.

“Enterprises are looking for solutions that can bring together customer feedback from all channels into one intelligence hub,” according to Sid Banerjee, CEO of Clarabridge.

Clarabridge has already established acquisitions as key to its growth strategy. After securing $80 million in late 2013, the company scooped up survey software provider MarketMetrix, in 2014.

Worldwide, consolidation and investment continues among agencies and technology firms heavily invested in real-time and social marketing services.

Among a host of other agency deal deals, Publicis Groupe recently bought Italian social-media agency Ambito5; VML -- part of WPP’s Y&R network -- and picked up Shanghai-based social media shop Teein. IPG Mediabrands agreed to acquire Turkish social media agency Promoqube, based in Istanbul.

On the vendor side, Brand Networks just agreed to buy rival Shift for $50 million in cash and stock. The combined social-marketing platforms will manage over $500 million in advertising spend, according to internal estimates.

In addition, social-marketing firm Percolate just secured another $40 million in Series C financing led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

This year, advertisers will spend $23.68 billion on social networks -- up 33.5% from $17.74 billion, last year -- according to eMarketer.