Margins Check: Microsoft’s ad plans, XM and Sirius, and more

Editor’s Note: Welcome to On the Margins, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week, the RCR Wireless News staff considers events in the wider business world and how they could affect the wireless industry.
–Microsoft bought closely held Rapt, which provides advertising-yield-management systems for Internet publishers. The move again reinforces the importance of online advertising to the new digital economy, and underscores the push by huge software companies — from Microsoft to Yahoo to Google — into the space. Mobile ad players would do well to watch carefully the activity on the Internet side of the equation.
–The Justice Department approved the merger between satellite radio firms XM and Sirius. Now the issue moves to the Federal Communications Commission. If the merger is approved by the FCC, those in the streaming radio space likely will need to form ties with the newly merged radio vendor.
–MySpace, Google and Yahoo announced plans to form the OpenSocial Foundation in an effort to promote open, community-governed specifications for building social-networking services. The news should come as a boon to those companies hoping to break out the mobile social networking space, as they may be able to develop to a single Web standard.