Now that Google has bought Doubleclick and Yahoo! (YHOO) has sucked up Right Media, it appears that Microsoft may be the buyer for 24/7 RealMedia (TFSM). The deal would be much better than the one Yahoo! did. TFSM is up over 30% in the pre-market.

Yahoo! simply picked up an online auction business which tends to get the low level inventory from the web. 247 is really a smaller version of Doubleclick. It serves advertising and screens display ads to target them to a specific demographic.

In the horse race to get into the online ad business, Google has taken the lead, with Microsoft (MSFT) a strong second and Yahoo! way behind.  Here is what we noted back on April 13 before the online advertising sector went nuts.

Douglas A. McIntrye