Funny… earlier this week I was wondering about the future of Yahoo’s ad network: would this once dominant network slowly sink into the ground or would it somehow turn around and revive itself? Looks like we have the answer in the form of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo! While that’s a huge premium over the stock price (62%), I’m betting Microsoft knows what it’s doing here. Yahoo’s ad network has good bones, and just needs some vision on where to take it. While some of the changes Yahoo made to its ad network looked promising, as mentioned here, it would’ve been nice if they’d tried to leapfrog Google instead of just imitating them. And Microsoft seems to have some interesting ideas on the future of online advertising, but they lacked the network that Yahoo would now give them. A Microsoft/Yahoo deal looks like it’ll fill important voids in both camps. Maybe, just maybe, this will inject some new life into Yahoo’s ad network – I don’t normally root for Microsoft, but this Yahoo deal and other changes at Microsoft are a positive sign. They might just be taking Hugh Macleod’s Blue Monster campaign seriously.