As an independent company, Rapt picked up clients like Fox Interactive Media, Yahoo, and AOL/Tacoda as well as MSN. We’re sure MSN will stick around.

But with today’s announcement that Microsoft has acquired Rapt for an undisclosed sum, and plans to add it to the Atlas Publisher Suite, the appeal of Rapt to its Internet clientele may be a little less today than it was yesterday.

Judging by Microsoft’s announcement, they will be breaking Rapt’s technology into easily digestable chunks and feeding it to Atlas:

A key product that will emerge from the marriage of Rapt’s planning capabilities and Atlas’ campaign management capabilities is an integrated publisher sales workflow solution. This solution will improve upon the existing industry offerings for publishers’ sales teams when used with Rapt’s existing pricing analytics, inventory management and business intelligence products on top of Atlas’ ad serving platform.

We won’t be surprised if some of Microsoft’s Internet competition opts for a new provider of ad yield management solutions.