It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings. What do we know about Microsoft and Yahoo!. The latest is that supposedly, they’ve called it quits.

Yahoo! issued a communication declaring that all intentions and possible transactions regarding what could have been a partial or ‘all out’ merge with Microsoft, have come to an end. ‘With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo!’s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo!’s Board of Directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company’s view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.’

I guess this time it is for real, and it’s not a way to profit and/or gain play time since Yahoo!’s stocks have fallen dramatically, 13%, after ending talks with Microsoft. Yahoo! declared it intends to preserve its search business nature and not link it to the tech mogul, for it would defeat its purpose and would trigger Yahoo!’s future strategic growth, as well as, clash with stockholder interests.

However, this whole merging revolt did raise a new ‘possible’ deal between Yahoo! and Google, which we know came about after the test run of the Google ad system, that occurred earlier in the season; which in the end resulted very positive for both companies.

Now they’ve partnered up for search technology where Google will serve as a full-time AdSense advertiser for Yahoo!’s search pages and all other services.

Note: Yahoo! is not giving in to Google, it will continue its search functionality and remain king of its castle. Scott Fulton from BetaNews gives us all the juice on his post, ‘Google, Yahoo make the deal: AdSense on Yahoo Search.’ Basically, the way it works is, advertisers pay Yahoo! for clicks on search results within the Yahoo! network, while advertisers whose results on Google appear on the Yahoo! owned network, will have to pay Google directly.

Google AdSense is probably one of the most revolutionary products in Big G’s history: together with AdWords, it is without a doubt one of the most important Google tools. While AdWords is the perfect technology for advertisers, AdSense is publisher oriented… and in this case we are talking about EVERY publisher. That’s the power of AdSense: its easily used by everyone.

AdSense was originally developed by Acquires Applied, a Santa Monica based company acquired in 2003 by Google. Soon after, Google rolled out AdSense, thus iniciating a new revolution in contextual advertising.

The mechanism behind AdSense is as simple as it is smart; every webmaster can use an advertising space for displaying Google ads (text ads, banners or video ads). The only requirement is inserting a javascript code into the site, choosing a media format for the ads to be displayed on and that’s it!

The webmaster will be paid for every click on the ads displayed: the publisher earns from clicks while the advertiser has the opportunity to find an appropriate space inside Google AdWords network.This network includes the content targeting network, where ads are automatically and contextually placed, and the placement targeting network, where an advertiser can choose the website where his ads are going to be displayed in.

Google’s Network reaches a vast audience, meaning that every advertiser should think about taking advantage of AdSense using the content network and the placement network offered by AdWords.

As for most of Google’s tools, AdSense’s success is also determined by its concept, since it’s easy to understand and easy to use by everyone: it is not necessary to be a geek. To implement AdSense into a website, a user should just sign up for a Google AdSense account and copy the few code lines provided by Google into the website itself. In few minutes everyone can be a publisher and can start to earn from website traffic.

Google is making things very easy for all people involved with video advertising and at 77 we think this will become really big really fast. Wondering what might constitute a publisher for Google in the future, I imagine myself putting videos on my Bebo page and making cold hard cash every time someone watches them.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are all trying to get their hands on advertising space on Facebook. Microsoft has already signed a contract for exclusive advertising on Facebook’s US pages, but other countries are still up for grabs. Also, all three of the giants are looking to buy a part of the company, it is rumoured, where the most concrete offer would be $500 million for five percent of the company from Microsoft.

Now VentureBeat points out that Google has found a backdoor into advertising space on Facebook. It is apparently actively approaching Facebook application developers – who are free to advertise in their own application as much as they want – to sign up for the Google AdSense program. This way, regardless of any deals Facebook might strike with other companies, Google is ensured of being able to advertise on the popular social network.

At 77 we look at the implication for marketers, which is; more points for Google. The attitude of Facebook to leave the building and use of its applications completely free to the developers has helped it grow and receive goodwill – even though the quality of the applications is often not exactly breath taking – and Google has jumped on the band wagon. We might expect an option in the AdSense program soon that will allow us to place our advertisements with certain Facebook applications, an advertising channel that is really targeted, and thus of high value.

The video (advertising the torchbearer campaign of Lenovo) was in a slightly different format than the YouTube player, and could be played at the same time as the featured video. Note that the video was not played automatically but had to be started manually.

We are not sure whether this is an experiment from Google’s side. Separate videos on the side seem not very intrusive, but there was no interaction with the featured video. That is, the featured video kept running during the showing of the commercial. This makes us believe it is part of some Google AdSense trials.

The video was spotted by yours truly on another person’s computer. Now, the same page gives only standard Google AdSense advertisements and no more videos. We will keep a close eye on it.

The banners through Adpinion come with an extra box on the left hand side, which invites the viewer to vote thumbs up or thumbs down. Clicking the disapproving sign makes the ad disappear for the current viewer and reduces the chance it will appear again for that viewer, and generally reduces the chances it will appear on that website. Clicking the thumbs up, however, increases the chances of one of the advertising company’s banners to pop up when you visit another site in the Adpinion network. It also makes the ad appear more often for that site. Advertisers are rewarded if their ads get positive reviews, as they will need to pay less to appear on their selected sites. It’s Google AdSense times two, basically.

But in our opinion, it will take very well targeted ads to make viewers actually vote on the banners, and in that case the votes will be mostly positive. Also, creating a profile that will secure a personalized advertising scheme seems like too much work for a customer. When you realize that the Click Through Rate of an average banner advertisement is well under 0.5 percent, that the banners are not targeted at all in the beginning and that voting on a banner actually means extra work for the user, maybe Adpinion should offer some incentive for the consumer to vote.

Google announced to “soon” introduce an advertising system for video games, reports Seattle PI. A logical step, we think at 77, as the in-game and around-game advertising market is growing fast. Even though the video game advertising is somewhat of a niche market, it seems able to reach a specific demographic. Targeting is easier than normal since the video game market is already rather defined. When console games go online more, this could become a small but valuable market for advertisers.

At the Casual Connect conference Google executives told a gathering of video game publishers and developers that Google is taking their AdSense system to the video game platform. It will allow publishers of video games to monetize the popularity of their games more by putting advertisements in them.

The video game advertising market is growing rapidly: according to Seattle PI, the Yankee Group concluded that in-game advertising alone will grow to almost $1 billion by 2011, from $78 million last year. The big video game platforms are rising to the occasion, as Xbox maker Microsoft recently bought in-game advertising company Massive Inc. and Google has already been talking with PlayStation makers Sony.

The real value of this market will surface when all the video games will be played online. When all Xbox, PlayStation and Wii users will opt in to play their games online, target marketing will be much easier for advertisers, as both their online behaviour and their in-game behaviour can be monitored. Also, advertising will then be dynamic instead of static, like the Google AdWords system. When you market a product that targets tech-savvy young adults or kids, and you can produce advertising that is not too intrusive, keep an eye on this medium.

A few select companies in the

USA were invited by Google to test AdSense for mobile, we read on WebProNews. Google has released its mobile site monetization plan, a necessity in our eyes for the mobile Internet to break through. The following was to be read in the invitation mail from Google (from Self Made Minds):

“As part of our efforts to develop new and improved AdSense products for our partners, we will begin a limited beta test for AdSense for mobile. AdSense for mobile allows publishers to monetize their mobile websites through the placement of targeted text ads. Publishers can take advantage of the fast-growing mobile advertising market and benefit from our targeting technology.”

AdSense for mobile allows publishers of mobile sites to receive money from advertisers: advertisers pay every time a viewer clicks on an ad and gets taken to the advertiser’s mobile site or uses the automatic call function and calls the advertiser with a click on the ad.

The first publishers in will get a head start on the mobile ad market, which is still relatively tiny; this will motivate publishers to create useful and interesting mobile sites, accelerating the evolution of the mobile web.

Google has officially introduced its AdSense system for the mobile Internet, after a short beta period. Like the regular AdSense, Google will analyze the content of mobile websites and use its findings to match advertisements with appropriate websites. According to the Google Press Centre, the program is available for mobile publishers in the US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan (available in the coming weeks).

Marketers will be offered the opportunity to advertise on mobile web pages that are chosen by them or deemed suitable by Google. In recent experiments, response on mobile ads has been much higher than response on traditional Internet ads during the infant years. Even though the period of experimenting seems about to end, we think mobile marketing is still a great opportunity to distinguish a brand from its competitors, before everyone else is doing it.

In this field. Google will not only have to compete with its traditional competitors – like Yahoo – but also with phone producers and new companies.