Microsoft buys mobile phone ad company

Perhaps still stinging from losing DoubleClick to Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has completed the purchase of European mobile advertising company ScreenTonic.

ScreenTonic provides the ads that pop up on cell phones of customers in Belgium, France and the U.K. It claims to have recently passed the billion-ads placed milestone. Visiongain, a media research company, recently released a report that estimated mobile marketing in the U.S. and Europe would hit $1 billion by 2009, benefiting from the use of new technology such as 3G.

Microsoft describes this purchase as another building block toward its goal of building a cross-platform, global ad placement capability. This will permit advertisers to drop their marketing message into your cell phone, your video games (in both your first AND your Second Life), your web browsing, anywhere Microsoft touches you. And it wants to touch you all over.

ScreenTonic was privately held, and terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The company will continue to maintain its headquarters in Paris.

Me, I'm not doing cartwheels at the thought that MSFT will find its way into my phone. It's already all over my PC.