Rapt solutions will provide Microsoft with advanced technology and services for digital media publishers.

Microsoft Corp. announced plans to acquire Rapt Inc., the provider of
advertising yield management solutions for digital media publishers. Rapt’s technology, along with its information and advisory services offerings, will become key components of the Atlas Publisher Suite, part of Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. 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.

“Online publishers have a complex array of needs, and they require more attentive and sophisticated partners to help them solve these challenges,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group at Microsoft. “With this acquisition, we are uniquely positioned to help publishers succeed on all fronts. Our end-to-end solution will include workflow tools, ad package and delivery, turnkey distribution, content partnerships, and yield management and optimization.”

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.

“The opportunity to join forces with Microsoft and to see our technology
flourish inside a much larger platform was too compelling to pass up,” said Tom Chavez, founder, president and CEO of Rapt. “We’re confident that, with Microsoft, we can continually improve publisher results and aggressively grow our combined client base that already includes over half of the top 25 U.S. publishers.”

Soniya Nautiyal, ITvoir Network