One day after Google launched a test flight of a free ad-serving tool, Microsoft agreed to acquire Rapt, which makes advertising yield management software for online publishers.

Terms of the deal were not made public. Microsoft officials March 14 said they will fold Rapt's technology and information and advisory services into the Atlas Publisher Suite the software maker cultivated from its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive last year.

With Rapt, Microsoft will now be able to offer customers much of the technology Google offers its customers from its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick, including asset and inventory management, forecasting, yield and sales management, and ad delivery and operations.

Microsoft also forecast a specific product from the Rapt-Atlas marriage: The company said in a statement it will blend Rapt's ad planning capabilities and Atlas' ad campaign management tools to whip up a publisher sales workflow service.