WebProNews

Martin Sorrell's marketing powerhouse WPP Group has snared the next best ad serving prize after DoubleClick, by paying about $649 million for 24/7 Real Media. Microsoft had been rumored to be in the running for 24/7 Real Media, but the news today out of WPP put that tall tale to rest. The $11.75 per share WPP will pay to acquire 24/7 works out to some $649 million.

Google's deal to pick up DoubleClick from its private equity ownership will work out to $3.1 billion in comparison. For a little over a fifth of that price, Sorrell and WPP are now major online ad serving players on the Internet.

"Online advertising will exceed $33 billion in 2007 or more than 8% of global advertising spend, based on GroupM estimates. This is expected to continue to grow strongly in the future, particularly as traditional media increasingly embraces and develops digital channels," WPP said in a statement.

Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp said WPP made the 24/7 deal to compete with Google and Yahoo. Their acquisitions of DoubleClick and Right Media, respectively, demonstrate a "disruption of the ad agency business," according to Karp.