As online advertising grows, it is natural that offline ad agency networks get more worried - after all, they will be witness to ad dollars migrating to technology companies! So, it is not surprising that ad giant Publicis Groupe recently acquired leading online agency Digitas for $1.3 billion.

And now, with advertising giant WPP just announcing its acquisition of online advertising network & technology firm 24/7 Real Media for $ 649 million, the trend is confirmed.

Shifting Focus
For the past couple of years, large marketers have been constantly shifting their ad budgets to online advertising. So, this change in focus for ad agencies was bound to happen sooner or later.

Of course, by announcing its intention to acquire DoubleClick, the world's largest online ad serving co., online behemoth Google in a way, accelerated matters.

To date, Google's advertising model targets "the long tail" for its advertising revenues. The clientele (mostly small businesses & online publishers) is quite, quite different from the multi-national marketing cos. who are the targets of large advertising networks.

Perhaps that's why WPP (who has earlier acquired digital outfits like VideoEgg, Wild Tangent, Spot Runner, as also interactive agencies like Bridge Worldwide, Zaaz) had never invested in any online ad serving business so far.

Take A Position!
But with DoubleClick entering the Google fold, the equation will change. And drastically at that. The Google group's dominance is very likely to cast its shadow on online display ads. Because Google-DoubleClick's ad clients will include marketing Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever et al. (Incientally, most of these are existing DoubleClick clients !)

Google's takeover bid for DoubleClick can probably be considered as the tipping point - inciting a change of state from "wait & watch" to "take a position" !