When I go to NY, I try to meet up with 24/7 Real Media (NASDAQ: TFSM)'s CEO Dave Moore (I did an interview with him back in August for BloggingStocks). He's a pioneer of the online advertising space and started his company back in 1995.

In fact, his company nearly went bust during 2002 but he was able to save everything. Now, he has sold his company to WPP Group PLC (NASDAQ: WPPGY) for a cool $649 million.

To get some insight on the deal, I talked to Tim Vanderhook, the CEO of online advertising company Specific Media. According to him:

"This acquisition shows a continued interest by traditional ad agencies to bring search marketing services into their fold. 24/7 Real Media is best known for its industry-leading search marketing tools, along with its ad-serving technology. Although 24/7 gives WPP the ability to enter the display advertising market, this purchase is primarily driven for the need to bring search engine marketing services under the big agency umbrella. 24/7 purchased Decide Interactive in 2004 and successfully scaled the technology to a very large consumer base. For WPP, this acquisition allows them to push the search marketing technology out to all of the agencies it owns and gives them higher margins in an industry that is struggling to maintain the status quo. The increased margin can only happen if they are able to funnel their current clients' search engine marketing campaigns through 24/7's technology. This will be a very lucrative deal for WPP in the long run if they are able to truly integrate this business into all of the agencies they own. Unique and differentiated technologies will be the key to success in the future as large ad agencies seek to differentiate their service offerings from each other. "

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.