Microsoft picks up another ad company; Buys Rapt

Microsoft on Friday said it has acquired Rapt, a company that makes software to manage Web advertising yields.

In a statement, Microsoft said:

With the inclusion of Rapt, the Atlas Publisher Suite allows Microsoft to provide its customers with integrated asset and inventory management, forecasting, yield and sales management, and ad delivery and operations.

Rapt's technology will be wrapped into Microsoft's Atlas Publisher Suite, which was acquired in the aQuantive purchase. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Rapt acquisition is part of an effort by Microsoft to create a comprehensive online advertising dashboard to better compete with Google. It's a real land grab for online advertising technologies.

Microsoft added that Rapt will allow the software giant to layer ad price analytics, inventory management and business intelligence on top of the Atlas platform.