Microsoft on Tuesday took the cover off Microsoft Advertising, a new brand for its group of advertising products, which includes the ad platform adCenter, the ad exchange AdECN, the ad serving technology provider Atlas, and the in-game ad services provider, Massive. Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group will market Microsoft Advertising. Speaking at the company's advance08 conference, held in its Redmond, Wash. corporate headquarters, Brian McAndrews, SVP of the APS group, said the new brand was meant to "bring order amidst the chaos" of advertising and marketing services products the software giant now owns. McAndrews told the audience of brands …

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, CNBC stock picker Jim Cramer reveals, "I hate media stocks." When Cramer speaks ill, that can be very bad news for a sector as his show "Mad Money" holds significant sway with its millions of viewers. So why does he "hate" media stocks? Blame it on Google and Apple. "The world got changed by two companies," he said. "Apple is taking away the profitability of TV, and Google is taking it away in print. And it's never going to reverse." Having said that, Cramer stresses that Google is the more immediate villain. …

Mobile phone advertising is still years away from any breakthroughs, though its eventual adoption is inevitable, ad executives said Tuesday. Speaking at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO Maurice Levy told the audience "It will be slow, it will take time but it will be there," he said, because mobile phone advertising is "in the interest of the phone companies, consumers and advertisers. So it will be very difficult to resist." Indeed, as mobile operators deal with falling traditional voice revenue, and consumers watch the price of just about everything food and gas related …

Thanks in part to the proliferation of video-enabled smartphones and other mobile video devices, just about anyone can (and does) report breaking news these days. And what better place to broadcast you-news than YouTube? Indeed, the Google video site is hoping to corner the burgeoning citizen journalism movement through its new news channel, "Citizen News". Lame name notwithstanding, Citizen News was inspired by all the news reporting, interviewing and investigating that already regularly turns up on YouTube. But parent Google obviously sees the potential for something bigger. According to Ars Technica, the Citizen News channel already has over 70 YouTube …

As Carl Icahn receives support for his Yahoo proxy battle from such financial heavyweights as oil guru T. Boone Pickens, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking in Israel Wednesday, reiterated that his company is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo. Icahn last week notified the Yahoo board that he would launch a proxy fight if it failed to pursue a Microsoft merger ahead of the company's July 3 shareholder meeting, but Ballmer's comments will have rankled Icahn's plans. "We are not bidding to buy Yahoo," Ballmer said. "Yet, we are trying to have discussions about deals with Yahoo …

Bolstered by the prospect of adding Yahoo Search to its arsenal, Microsoft is revisiting an old experiment: bribing people to use its search service in order to steal market share away from Google. Under the new plan, Microsoft will give consumers cash back on certain purchases made from advertisers in 18 vertical search categories. Microsoft is touting the cash-back service as a way to use search to get deals on products, but the truth is, many of the so-called "deals" they find will actually be artificial promotions for Live Search. According to Microsoft's Web site, savings will be based on …