• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 22, 2005

News Corp.'s social networking trophy MySpace has replaced 24/7 Real Media's ad management platform with rival DoubleClick's DART Enterprise client, MySpace and DoubleClick said Wednesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In July, News Corp. agreed to buy MySpace's parent company Intermix for $580 million. Just a week before the announcement, Nielsen//NetRatings' AdRelevance unit reported that MySpace had beat out heavyweights MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail as the leading site for advertisers to promote their wares in June, with a 7.9 percent share of ad impressions. Advertisers include Procter & Gamble and Sony Pictures.

Also in July, DoubleClick released DART Enterprise 6.0. The upgrade was meant to bring greater scalability and flexibility to clients for managing and reporting on online ad campaigns and newer environments, such as iTV.

Changes to the software--known as AdServer at one time--included frequency capping at ad, flight, and affiliate levels; same-page ad restriction enhancements, which allow advertisers to own a whole page; a Web services API for trafficking, allowing integration between DART and SAP; and integration with DART Motif, its rich media product, for simplifying such ad campaigns, among other features and enhancements.