Although Microsoft has not really profited at all so far from the iPhone phenomenon, they may have their eyes on a different way of making money: providing the ad network that will serve ads into iPhone applications.

In an interesting post this week over at FT.com/Techblog, Chris Nuttall discusses this possibility and reports on a conversation he had with the head of Microsoft’s Massive marketing division.



According to Chris, JJ Richards, who is the head of Massive in addition to being general manager of Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft said, “Apple doesn’t have an ad platform. They will either let every iPhone developer choose their own, which will hopefully be us, or they’ll pick one, which again will hopefully be us.”

Microsoft has ambitions are to provide an ad serving platform that can deliver ads onto many different devices, including mobile, game consoles, PC’s and IP-based set-top boxes.

Read the entire article on FT.com/techblog.