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2008 has not been a good year for Yahoo. Microsoft's failed acquisition of the company was a royal mess and led to a showdown with shareholders.

CEO Jerry Yang and other board members aren't very popular. And in what essentially amounts to an admission that it simply can't compete in certain areas, Yahoo is planning to turn over part of its search advertising business to Google.

With the financial markets in serious turmoil and financial services firms hurting, it's not surprising that financial services firms are spending far less on online display advertising than they did when times were better.

A new report by Nielsen highlights just how substantial the decrease is and indicates that it's having a noticeable impact on the entire online display ad market.

The nascent mobile advertising market is a fascinating one.

For all the hype and very real potential, it's hard not to observe that the market has failed to develop as rapidly as had been predicted - despite the fact that bullish sentiments have never really waned over the years.

With the global economy on the ropes, many believed that television advertising was going to suffer.

And the death of television itself has been predicted for years as many argued that the accountability offered by digital advertising would eventually make television advertising a lot less compelling.

Facebook's ill-fated Beacon failed to successfully solve the problem that has plagued advertisers on social networks - dismal results.

In fact, it became a legal liability for some of them.

I have issue with the process of online media buying. Agreeing a spend budget for the month, researching a handful of websites, a few phone calls to negotiate the rate, booking a volume of impressions, signing an insertion order before sending over the ad-serving tags.

It feels too rigid, too simplistic, but most of all too much like offline media buying! But is that all about to change?

Mobile advertising is going to be big. Really big. Or at least that’s what the analysts are clamouring to tell us, with a succession of bullish forecasts having been released since the dawn of time. And they keep on coming.

Disappointing results, job cuts, the loss of its former CEO and a takeover approach from arch-rival Microsoft.

We take a look at a tumultous past couple of weeks for Yahoo.

The internet advertising space has been consolidating this year, with a number of major acquisitions driven by the big chiefs at the likes of Microsoft, Google and WPP.

We've compiled a handy cut-out and keep list of the ones that caught our eye, all $12bn worth. I bet we've missed a few, so let us know if you have some others to suggest...

The head of media buying group ZenithOptimedia is expected to give a rosy outlook on digital ad spending at the UBS annual media conference in New York today.

Chief exec Steve King will tell the gathering that he expects the web to become the world’s third largest ad medium by 2010, behind only newspapers and TV, according to The Times.