ReadWriteWeb

It's called a spoiler tactic. You take your competitor's biggest cash cow and offer a free alternative. Everybody from Linux to Google has used the tactic against Microsoft. So who can fault Microsoft when it uses it against Google's advertising cash cow? The guys who benefit from this tactic today are the good folks at OpenX, the open-source alternative to ad servers from Google such as DoubleClick (for big publishers) and AdManager (for small publishers). (Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses OpenX to host our advertising inventory.)

Of course, ad-serving itself is not really the cash cow, but it is a key part of it. The real prize is a viable alternative to AdSense. This is the background of today's news about OpenX and Microsoft announcing an advertising technology partnership.

According to the latest data from mobile advertising company AdMob, traffic from Apple's iPhone on AdMob's advertising network almost doubled in August. Apple's iPhone saw the fastest growth of all smartphones worldwide, closely followed by the Samsung Instinct. It is also noteworthy that the top 5 smartphones in the U.S. generated 54% of all smartphone traffic.

"The Internet is recession proof," is a sentiment we've heard trumpeted over and over and over again the past year. However, guest author Llew Claasen argued on this blog in February that paid search ads specifically are actually not recession proof, and a new report out today appears to confirm that a broad economic slowdown in the United States is starting to negatively effect the online ad industry.