• by Laurie Petersen , April 18, 2007

Ad network 24/7 Real Media wasted no time in capitalizing on the opportunity presented by Google's announcement that it acquired rival DoubleClick.

"Google to acquire DoubleClick. Good for them. Good for you? Call us. 24/7 Real Media." That's the creative in banners for the new online trade campaign concocted over the weekend and launched on Monday. Visitors click through to a detailed lead generation form enabling 24/7 Real Media's salespeople to follow up.

The campaign is intended to draw publishers and search marketers who are DoubleClick customers, said Sherri Valenti, vice president of marketing for 24/7 Real Media, whose stock value enjoyed a nice bump in trading this week.

"We're getting a lot of in-bound calls in response," said Valenti, declining to give specific details. "It's the large publishers and search marketers who are most impacted by this."

So what's the 24/7 Real Media message?

"I mean, if you're a publisher, you're running all your sensitive campaign information through DART and it's now owned by one of your biggest competitors who you're fighting against for ad dollars," said Valenti.

The timing was also opportunistic because 24/7 Real Media just updated its Web site and this offered the ideal traffic generating opportunity, Valenti said.

According to Valenti, 24/7 Real Media serves more than 2,000 different publishers with Weather.com and CBS MarketWatch among its largest clients. The company also has search marketing services.

"With this sort of conflict of interest coming to light," Valenti said, "it opens the door to people who didn't want to make a switch who [might possibly think] maybe they should."

No signs yet of any such direct marketing by aQuantive or ValueClick, two other online advertising networks that stand to benefit from DoubleClick defectors. Calls to both companies went unreturned yesterday.

While it's not everyday a client changes ad-serving vendors, it's definitely not an everyday affair. Still, one senior media buyer who wished to remain unnamed said while the option of replacing DoubleClick's services with a rival is feasible, the main obstacle is whether rivals have the server power to scale their operations.

Google and DoubleClick executives, meanwhile, defend the sanctity of their operation. The $3.1 billion deal will not close until the end of the year and faces FTC scrutiny.