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Microsoft is reportedly one of the suitors for online advertising network DoubleClick. Many believe a deal is imminent.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that DoubleClick’s owner–Hellman & Friedman–is looking to cash out for roughly $2 billion–nearly twice what they paid for DoubleClick in 2005.

There are plenty of options for DoubleClick, and of course, it could go public again, but a Microsoft purchase could be beneficial for both parties especially given speculation that Google will soon announce a Double-Click-like service.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft will pull the trigger on a deal this big. Given that Adcenter hasn’t gained much traction and is lagging behind both Google and Yahoo, the DC purchase could be the fastest and most efficient move to secure a place in the growing and lucrative online advertising market. It has to do something fairly quickly or be left behind.

Obviously Microsoft could move several different directions to change its situation –it could buy Yahoo (which has been rumored as well), but that would be a very expensive deal OR it could continue to pump money into its current online services to try and get some kind of traction organically. Given these scenarios, acquiring DoubleClick seems like a middle ground approach.

If you haven’t already read it, check out Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario 2.0 in this week’s AdAge. It’s a long piece, but worth the read. It’s pretty eye opening and judging by the number of comments, it’s hitting a nerve. I’ll second a comment on the story from Rick in Chicago: This is the clearest, most compelling piece I’ve read on this topic in two years. Will your readers’ buy it? Who knows? Should they? Depends on what they want to be doing in two years.

Here’s just a few snippets of the story:

“The online space isn’t remotely developed enough — nor will it be anytime soon — to absorb the advertising budgets of the top 100 marketers, to match the reach of traditional media or to fulfill the content desires of the audience. (Maybe viewers no longer demand their MTV, but what remains of the mass audience is in no hurry to surrender its Los Angeles Times and “Lost.”) A collapsing old model. An unconstructed new model. Paralyzed marketers. Disenchanted consumers. It’s all so … chaotic.

How long it will be before order is restored is anybody’s guess. What is certain is that the Brave New World, when it emerges, will be far better for marketers than the old one. What is nearly as certain is that many existing ad agencies and some media agencies will be left behind. And the reason they will be left behind is their stubborn notion that they can somehow smoothly transition to a digital landscape.

“It’s a very different kind of world,” says Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and author of “Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate Over Media Ownership.” “The problem is, the expectations are there to capture that mass audience that long ago disappeared. We are witnessing the gradual death of the business models that thrived in that age of scarcity.”

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It may not be near as ‘designer cool’ as Apple’s iPhone, but new startup ZenZui may actually give those with lust in their hearts (but an unwillingness to change to Cingular or pay $500+ for a closed system iPhone) another graphical option that’s pretty slick.

According to this story in the.next.net, ZenZui will push data to mobile phones in the form of little widgets that people can subscribe to. And because they don’t intend to make their own phone, they will have fewer restrictions than Apple on who can create the widgets and where the widgets can be seen. Content owners, brands or even individual developers can build the tiles. Which means we could see lots of them developed very quickly because anything with an RSS feed can become a widget. Subscribing to widgets would enable users to create their own mobile portal.

The Zoomspace that appears on a phone’s screen is a grid of 16 “tiles” that could be sponsored by major brands, such as Amazon.com, Nike, Kayak.com, ABC, Fox’s “The Family Guy,” Traffic.com and more. Users pick the tiles they want on their screen (i.e. subscribe to the feeds). Eventually, the grid is expected to grow to 36 tiles. The tiles let users see 16 miniature pages at once. They can zoom in on a tile to get flight times or prices, or zoom out to scroll around to another page.

Each tile reserves space for ads in a corner. Which will give carriers new revenue streams through advertising and the ads will subsidize the application, so there’s no charge to the user. Mobile advertising is a hot topic now for marketers and this could help it gain some traction, but could create a pretty cluttered environment in short order. Yet to be seen I guess.

ZenZui will make this service free (but the invite-only beta doesn’t start until the summer). There’s a video demo of how it work on YouTube here>

Meet trainvertising.

Yes that’s right. Someone actually thinks it’s a good idea to put advertising on the side of a train car.

Somehow I have a hard time seeing the positive community relations or any positive spin on this one. Maybe it’s just my personal point of view, but every time I see a train, I’m simultaneously being annoyed by it….it’s making racket when I’m trying to nap or it’s delaying my ability to drive as I sit behind 40 other cars waiting for the damn thing to meander its way through the crossing.

Pretty clever execution for Papa Johns by Lowe Delhi. Via AdArena.

Well…here’s a perfect combination of media and message.

It works on two levels. The obvious analogy to the roulette wheel is one thing, but the fact that every time you travel you gamble that your luggage will actually arrive is the one that probably strikes the viewer first.

For a Venice Casino. Via Disruption.

Remember the Doritos super bowl contest? Well, it turns out that according to Jason McDonell, director of marketing for the brand, the online effort and contest ultimately racked up one billion impressions, equal to $36 million in paid media.

Plus of course all the coverage for being one of the handful of advertisers to run a user generated content spot during the big game.

As a followup to the effort, check out Snackstongproductions.com where you can see the Dale Backus spot that won the contest. I still liked Mousetrap best.

I was just released from Milkatraz. I got nabbed trying to steal the last glass of milk and was forced to do hard time (for a few seconds anyway).

Tonight I finally got a chance to check out the Get The Glass online game created as part of the latest overall Got Milk campaign from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

I’m impressed. Not just with the sophisticated, yet retro, feel of the online game (which is way cool by itself), but with the entire Mission Impossible meets Raiders of the Lost Ark nature of the campaign and the brilliance of the strategy behind the effort.

The long running Got Milk campaign has, by all measures, been an incredibly successful effort for the California Milk Processor Board. But what really impresses me is how it has been kept so creative and fresh over the years while staying spot-on strategy.

The latest version, dubbed Get the Glass, launched this week and includes 7 television spots and the online game and will run through December. You can see the new spots on the game web site.

The creator of the famous anti-Hillary Clinton ad mimicking the famous 1984 Apple spot was outed this week on HuffingtonPost.com. Phil de Vellis, the creator of the ad, subsequently resigned from his job at a political interactive consultancy, Blue State Digital.

Vellis claims he made the spot on his own time, with his own equipment, and not at the request of the Barack Obama campaign, which is plugged at the end of the spot and for whom Blue State Digital works.

The ad was posted on YouTube on March 5, and has received over 2 million views and nearly 5,000 comments.

This is sure to be an interesting (and looooooong) political season.

You know the saying. Right? Truth is stranger than fiction.

Reading the coverage of WPP Group Chief Executive Martin Sorrell’s libel case is a bit like reading a Judith Krantz novel. When you see the phrases and language that is coming out in this trial, it’s hard to believe this is a real court case. It seems so fictional. Like a soap opera script. Every day there seems to be some new juicy tidbit for the media to chew on.

This has to be humiliating for all involved. And I can’t imagine it reflects well on the ad agency busines overall given the industry is already wrestling with its share of various other scandals and general questions as to the effectiveness of the agency model in today’s marketplace. The good news for Sorrell is that he apparently doesn’t come off anywhere near as bad as Howard Draft and Julie Roehm. Poll results via AdWeek 3/21/2007.

For everyone’s sake I hope this gets resolved quickly and the name calling ends.

(although this case has, by far, the most creative name calling I’ve seen in years)