Microsoft announced last month that advertisers can now extend their campaigns to social media through Windows Live for mobile in France, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. by creating banner ads that will be visible across Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail.

This builds upon Microsoft’s initial launch of mobile advertising for MSN Mobile in France, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. where mobile ads are available alongside premium MSN Mobile content. Advertising on Windows Live for mobile is already available in Spain, and later this month will be available in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, further extending its availability for advertisers. All ads placed on these two popular services will adhere to Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) guidelines.

“The mobile device is emerging as a prime opportunity for advertisers to reach their audience,” said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of Mobile Services at Microsoft. “This announcement is evidence of our commitment to providing advertisers with further opportunities to connect and engage consumers throughout their ‘digital day’ – at home, at work and on the go across multiple platforms, devices and geographic regions.”

Microsoft also announced plans to further expand its mobile offerings for advertisers to now include mobile search advertisements on Live Search Mobile. For the first time invited advertisers can create keyword campaigns through Microsoft adCenter that target customers on the go while they are using Live Search Mobile.

This will be the first time that Microsoft has enabled advertisers to monetize its popular mobile search service. The beta is currently available in the U.S. and will be expanded in the second half of 2008.

The success of Yelp can be attributed to their against-the-grain philosophy. They did it their way, without following the lead of the popular review sites that came before them. Last March, it had 3.3 million users, according to research firm Comscore, up 87% from a year ago.

The New York Times recently ran a piece on Yelp, stating how the site has evolved and how they have put a premium on “the reviewing experience” above all.

In the article, Yelp’s co-founder and chief executive, Jeremy Stoppelman described Yelp as “a blog with a little bit of structure,” adding that the site mimics the structure of a social network, so that active members can see information about and follow the work of other reviewers who interest them. Yelp has also started holding social events for its frequent reviewers.

Stoppelman believes that site has also popular because Yelp has been slow to add advertising. There are no only a few banner ads. “Instead, Yelp uses some relatively subtle advertising formats: Businesses can pay to have their companies listed first on search pages (identified as a sponsored listing). And they can pay to add photos and a little other information to the page about their business. But revenue from these sources isn’t enough to make Yelp profitable.”

Responding to criticism from business owners that some user reviews are unfair, Yelp also recently introduced a way for the business owner to send a message back to a reviewer, the article stated. If the reviewer doesn’t choose to write back, the business owner can’t send a second message.

Ultimately, Stoppelman says, the site deliberately bends its rules to support the reviewers. “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third,” he told the New York Times.

Last April, the alpha version of the India-based Yureekah (www.yureekah.com), the first known search engine for use by individuals seeking online advertising information (and effectively organizing and making it universally accessible for free), was launched for testing. Yureekah allows its users to find out where competitors are advertising and determining the best options for future brand advertising is as easy as clicking a mouse button.

“We set out with a singular mission; to organize the world’s online advertising information and make it universally accessible and useful through a single, automated portal – and in the process eliminate the enormous inefficiencies that currently exist,” said Yureekah Co-Founder Devaraj Southworth. “Yureekah is free to all users, enabling agencies and advertisers to reduce costs, but also levels the playing field for small business owners and individual advertisers by offering the same access and ability. We believe that our suite of products will change the way in which traditional online advertising operates. Our objective is to develop a collaborative online platform for all online advertising needs and intend to replicate the success of Google’s AdWord in the Display space.”

Yureekah can prove to be a great resource for various categories of professionals. Here is some information from their press release:

*AGENCIES – With Yureekah, conducting a real-time competitive analysis of similar businesses takes minutes versus weeks. Not only does Yureekah search competitor ads internationally, but it also archives them for future use. Yureekah also enables live, automated searching for global campaigns, making the task painless.

*ADVERTISERS – Launching a product worldwide in less than 24 hours used to be impossible – but not anymore. Yureekah enables competitive research and understanding of competitors’ brands online advertising capabilities in no time.

*SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS – Finding out where the top brands in a field are advertising online is a daunting task, especially for small business owners short on time and money. With Yureekah, small business owners have access to the same easy-to-use competitive search tool as the large advertisers, all for free.

“The technology solution Yureekah has developed is one of a kind, and is poised to become a major force in the online media industry,” said Larry Bouts, Yureekah advisor and former PepsiCo operating division CFO, Chairman of Six Flags and President of Toys “R” Us International. “It is clear that Yureekah sits in the middle of a $50 billion industry that is growing at 30 plus percent a year.”

The inspiration for Yureekah came from serial entrepreneurs, Devaraj Southworth and Vishal Sharma. “As an agency ourselves, we realized the inefficiencies and the manual processes involved with online competitive research,” said Yureekah Co-Founder Vishal Sharma. “In several situations we had to turn away business because timelines were unrealistic for us, let alone larger agencies. We realized that if we, as a boutique agency, were facing these issues, then certainly other professionals were feeling the same pains.”

To date, Yureekah has been completely self-funded by Southworth and Sharma, but the decision has been made to seek equity financing, including a major capital campaign launch.

AT&T and Apple recently announced that the innovative iPhone 3G will be available in the U.S. on July 11. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast as the first-generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

“We’re offering the most advanced mobile device ever on the nation’s most advanced high speed network,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility. “We think iPhone 3G is an amazing mobile device and our customers are going to love using iPhone 3G to make calls, send emails and surf the web even faster.”

“We’re thrilled to continue working with the largest wireless carrier in the US to bring iPhone 3G to AT&T customers this July,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. “iPhone 3G is a revolutionary product and we can’t wait for customers to get their hands on it.”

AT&T’s wide 3G mobile broadband network offers 3G mobile phones download speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps. AT&T’s 3G network is currently available in more than 275 leading U.S. metropolitan areas and by year-end, the company plans to offer 3G service in nearly 350 metropolitan areas.

iPhone 3G will retail at USD $199 for the 8GB model and USD $299 for the 16GB model in both Apple and AT&T’s retail stores, and requires a new two-year contract. AT&T will also sell iPhone 3G through its direct business sales teams.

Online Media Daily ran an article on what they termed, “The Interactive Advertising Revolution.” They raised some interesting and enlightening points:

* Interactive video is today’s the most visible driver in terms of ad performance. According to a June 2007 Online Publishing Association report, of the 80% of viewers who watched a video ad online, 52% took some sort of action, whether checking out a Web site (31%), searching for more info (22%), going into a store (15%), or actually making a purchase (12%). As such, eMarketer is predicting that video is going to see the biggest growth in spend in 2008, with an increase of 48.9%.

* With each new emerging ad venue comes a new opportunity, but the ultimate key to success for each is the same: interactivity. As emerging formats like IPTV, mobile, 3D and virtual worlds become more popular, advertisers will benefit when the venue evolves to the point where it can accommodate truly interactive ad experiences that attract more audiences and engage them longer.

* Today’s in-page ads let users expand them to reveal even more media and interactivity, and can feature multiple videos, audio tracks, games and more that provoke users to spend not only seconds with ads, but minutes. Recent EyeWonder campaigns have even featured up to forty minutes of video in one ad unit, generating unprecedented view times that are quickly approaching an hour!

* Interactive Digital Advertising will generate brand engagements and returns on investment that seemed unimaginable even ten years ago. In this new world, passive venues will become afterthoughts, and forward-thinking brands will interact to own the marketplace.

* Studies show that publishers benefit from the interactive revolution through an increased number of visitors to their sites and enhanced site “stickiness” (users spending more time on the site). More importantly, publishers are typically able to generate more ad revenue from richer, interactive ads than their passive counterparts.