It’s the typically newsless time around Christmas and New Year’s, but for once there has actually been a lot going on at Yahoo.

Last week, the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s typically moribund board decided to move ahead with negotiations to sell part of its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as well as all of its shares in Yahoo Japan.

While that is still not a done deal, it adds clarity to the Yahoo mishegas, as current leaders there seek to turn around the company’s lagging fortunes.

Now, as Yahoo continues to contemplate a pair of partial investment bids by private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital into 2012, more focus will be on the selection of a CEO candidate to take over, sources said.

While I have floated some names that have been contemplated — such as Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, former aQuantive and Microsoft exec Brian McAndrews, and board member David Kenny — I have collected some more that seem to be getting the once-over and are being mentioned internally as well as externally.

Sources said that the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee at Yahoo, which is run by independent director Patti Hart, has been looking for someone with definite public company experience, as well as expertise in large-scale management.

As to talent, candidates seem to be either good at running big platforms, or deeply knowledgeable about advertising and media as well as technology.

Another important criteria, said sources: Someone who is “collaborative” and nonconfrontational. As in, not like the former and very pugnacious CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired in September.

Thus, here’s another trio of candidates to consider, while we wait — and who knows how long that will be given that the Asian activity could have tired out for a bit this usually slow-moving board:

Chris Liddell: The former CFO of Microsoft is an interesting name that just popped up recently, and it makes some sense when you think about the possible mindset of the Yahoo board.

Liddell, who has a charming New Zealand accent, did a short stint, from January of 2010 to March of this year, as CFO at General Motors. Recently married to another former Microsoft exec, he has since been living in New York.

He apparently loves living in the Big Apple.

But when he left GM, Liddell made it clear he wanted to go for a top job next. He was among the candidates for a recent search for a CEO of Time Warner’s Time Inc. (an effort that was run by exec search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which is also conducting the Yahoo hunt).

Known as tough and decisive, he certainly is qualified to deal with complex financial situations, such as the one in which Yahoo now finds itself knee-deep. One knock: Little product or advertising experience.

Laura Desmond: While certainly a dark horse, Desmond has been queried by Heidrick, said several sources.

She is CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis, one of the largest media planning and buying agencies, making Desmond one of advertising’s most prominent players.

Well-known in Yahoo’s key market, she is considered a savvy and smart exec with a wry sense of humor.

I happen to particularly like one line from one of her bios:

“Ms. Desmond’s career has been driven by two caveats: Take intelligent risks and learn more from failure than from success.”

She could learn a lot at Yahoo. (I know, easy jab, but it works!)

David Rosenblatt: The former DoubleClick CEO, who went on to a big ad job at Google after it paid $3.2 billion for the company, is also a long shot, mostly by his own choosing.

The sharp exec is always on the short list of CEO candidates for a lot of big, splashy online jobs, but he seems to want to swim his own way.

Case in point: He was recently named CEO of New York-based 1stdibs, a relatively obscure online marketplace known among antique dealers and interior designers looking for one-of-a-kind furniture, art and lighting.

Yes, that’s right: Fancy lamps.

Rosenblatt also serves on the boards at Group Commerce, Twitter and IAC.

All that Internet ad and e-commerce experience is exactly why Rosenblatt would be one of the better choices for CEO of Yahoo. But, for him, I would guess taking such a job is probably in the life’s-too-short category.

More to come, obvi!

Sources say that Finnegan, who served as president/chief digital officer at Starcom for the past two years, may end up replacing current Tremor CEO Jason Glickman. But multiple sources tell me that there’s no deal yet, and that Finnegan may end up at a different company altogether. I haven’t been able to reach Finnegan or Glickman for comment.

Tremor is one of the biggest players in the video ad business, and has been at it for four years. It’s also raised a big pile of money: $82 million, $40 million of which came in a round that closed earlier this year.

Finnegan has now worked for two of the biggest ad holding companies–prior to Starcom, he ran Omnicom’s OMD Digital group–as well as doing a brief stint at Vibrant Media, an “in-text” digital ad start-up.

UPDATE: Google has now confirmed the deal.
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Google has indeed bought ad technology start-up Invite Media, I’ve confirmed with multiple sources.

As I wrote last month, Invite is a three-year-old “demand-side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year.

I don’t have  a price for the deal nailed down, but I believe it’s in the $70 million range. Google (GOOG) declined to comment; I haven’t heard back from Invite Media CEO Nat Turner.

People familiar with the transaction say Google’s plan is to leave Invite running as a standalone unit, which will work at arm’s length with exchange’s like Google’s AdX, as well as competitors like OpenX, Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media and Microsoft’s (MSFT) AdECN.

That makes sense, because ad buyers who use Invite, like Publicis’s Vivaki, expect to be able to buy inventory from multiple exchanges.

But over time, Google does plan on investing in Invite and integrating it with DoubleClick for Advertisers, its ad-serving technology. Invite users wouldn’t be required to use DFA, but the two would be designed to match up seamlessly, sources said.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Invite’s competitors, like MediaMath, Turn and X+1, in the wake of this deal. Venture capitalists have poured money into demand-side platforms in recent years, but I’ve heard increasing skepticism about valuations those investors are seeking. And now the most obvious buyer, with the deepest pockets, is off the table.

Turner and his co-founders started Invite Media when they were still undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; the company has offices in Philadelphia and New York City. Investors include Comcast’s (CMCSA) venture arm and First Round Capital.

Invite had previously considered selling to Omniture last summer, but that deal went away after Adobe (ADBE) purchased the analytics company.

Industry sources believe Google (GOOG) is close to a deal for Invite, a three-year-old “demand side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year.

A deal has supposedly been in the works for some time, and one theory is that Google has been waiting for the AdMob saga to conclude before moving forward. Estimates for a price are all over the map, ranging from $60 million to $100 million.

The caveat: Google’s name has been linked to various DSPs for several months.

“We have not entered into any agreement with any company,” Invite CEO Nat Turner told me via email this afternoon. “I’ve honestly heard similar rumors about every other company in the space, so I don’t put too much credence in what people are saying these days.” A Google spokesman declined to comment on “rumor and speculation.”

Whether or not it makes sense for Google to buy Invite or any other DSP depends on whom you talk to. Some people think a DSP is a natural complement to Google’s AdX unit, since it makes it easier for big ad holding companies to funnel money into the exchange.

But others argue that since the point of a DSP is to let buyers work with multiple exchanges–like the one that Yahoo (YHOO) operates and the one Microsoft (MSFT) is testing–it makes no sense for buyers to use a tool owned by the industry’s biggest player. If anything, it makes much more sense for an ad buyer like Publicis’s Vivaki unit, which uses both Invite and Google’s exchange, to snap up Invite, they argue.

Turner and his co-founders started Invite Media when they were still undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; the company has offices in Philadelphia and New York City. Investors include Comcast’s (CMCSA) venture arm and First Round Capital.

Invite had previously considered selling to Omniture last summer, but that deal went away after Adobe (ADBE) purchased the analytics company. I’m told the proposed price for that deal was $17 million.

Meanwhile, Google shows zero signs of slowing down its M&A binge, which began last summer. Last week, the company announced two deals in addition to AdMob: The search giant said it intended to buy Global IP Solutions for $68 million and announced that it had purchased Simplify Media a few months ago.

Today’s example: Publicis, the giant French ad holding company. Publicis said its organic growth–that’s revenue after factoring out acquisitions like Razorfish, which it picked up in a fire sale from Microsoft (MSFT), etc.–declined by 5.4 percent, which is better than the 7.4 percent drop it posted in Q3. But this still means the company is shrinking, and that’s compared with dismal results from a year ago.

Publicis now says it expects to actually grow this year, so that’s good. But it’s not projecting anything substantial for another year.

“We have not yet come out of the crisis. We are in the process of getting out of it. One can still expect a few hurdles along the way, but the worst is over,” says CEO Maurice Levy.

The company’s organic growth–sales after netting out acquisitions and currency fluctuations–dropped 14.2 percent, just barely better than the 14.5 percent it posted the previous quarter.

That is “less sequential progress in the quarter than we hope to see,” CEO Michael Roth deadpanned. On the plus side, his agencies are having nice chats:

However, it’s fair to say that the tone of our conversations with clients concerning the economy is improving. However, we’ve not seen this yet converted to consistent commitments to new or existing projects. Therefore, it looks as if the pace of the recovery will be gradual and that significantly improving organic revenue performance for the whole of 2009 compared to the first nine months performance will be challenging.

In the end, Roth gave more or less the same report that we’ve seen most other places that aren’t in the search ad business dominated by Google (GOOG): He argued that “the worst is over,” but he thinks any significant improvement won’t show up until 2010.

Alas, that kind of muted hopefulness isn’t nearly enough to save any jobs during this fall’s media layoff season, which kicked off this week as my former employers at Forbes took an ax–yet again–to that company’s payroll. On the schedule: Cuts at the New York Times (NYT), Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. and at Bloomberg’s newly acquired BusinessWeek.

Things should be better for them, too, says Publicis, one of the biggest advertising companies in the world. The French holding company, which announced its results today, says things bottomed out this summer, and that “the advertising market is starting its recovery which will be slow and progressive.”

For a slightly less stilted version of that statement, see Publicis boss Maurice Levy: “The recovery will be slow, but all the signs we have are going in the right direction.”

As always with these stories, context is key: For now, “recovery”  generally means “less bad.” As in this case: Publicis says organic growth–the company’s performance after you strip out acquisitions and currency effects–declined 7.4 percent in the last quarter, which isn’t exactly sizzling. But it’s better than the 8.4 percent decline it notched in the previous quarter.

Publicis, the giant French ad holding company, has been warning Web publishers to be “hyper-vigilant” about other bogus ads like the ones the Times mistakenly sold, which were purportedly for Vonage (VG) but were actually designed to distribute malware. Publicis, whose units includes Starcom, Digitas, Optimedia, MediaVest, Zenith, and Spark, has been sending out letters warning publishers to be wary of the rogue ads, which it describes as an “industry issue.”

The catch: It appears that the only way to combat the attacks, at least in the near-term, is to do something that runs counter to industry trends: Throw bodies at the problem. Publicis wants publishers to individually verify the ad orders they receive, which would be a nonissue for traditional media but is a problem for Web publishing, which increasingly relies on automation. Mediapost:

The incidents have exposed potential vulnerabilities in on online publishing security, and are causing advertisers, agencies and publishers alike to reassess the processes they use to conduct business, especially as they interact with an increasing array of third-party intermediaries–advertising networks, exchanges, etc.–many of which place insertion orders automatically and without human intervention. The solution, as the Times’ and Publicis’ new policies suggest, is to reinsert human interaction into the process–at least for the time being.

Whoops. That whole thrust of Web publishing is get humans as far away as possible from buying and selling decisions: The ad exchange that Google (GOOG) launched last month, for instance, is designed to handle those tasks in milliseconds. Now think about how long it takes to pick up the phone to actually confirm that ad buyers are who they say they are [shudder].

It’s possible that this is simply butt-covering on the part of Publicis (these attacks have been out there for quite some time) and that this will blow over soon. But I don’t think so. Which means the ascent of Web ads may slow down, just a bit, as the industry figures out just how many humans it will take to fight the problem.

Last week, Microsoft was roundly praised for the way it structured its Yahoo deal. And today, the company seems to have struck a smart pact with Publicis, which will pay $530 million for Redmond’s Razorfish digital ad agency, which Ballmer never wanted anyway. And the French ad giant will agree to buy a certain amount of search and display inventory from Microsoft over the next five years.

The devil is in the details and we won’t know many of those until regulators sign off on the pact. And even then, we may not get the answer to two big questions: How much will Publicis actually be required to spend on Bing? And what are the penalties if it doesn’t fulfill the minimum?

But at first blush, it looks as though Microsoft (MSFT) managed to get out of a business it never wanted to be in in the first place–it acquired Razorfish as part of a $6 billion deal for aQuantive in 2007, and what it was interested in then was aQuantive’s ad-serving technology. And it may be able to force some dollars through its newly augmented Bing search engine.

That doesn’t guarantee that Web searchers will actually use Bing/Yahoo (YHOO), of course. Current estimates put the combined engines’ reach at 28 percent, and Google (GOOG) has just about everything else. One way to bump that up could be to dangle a big wad of cash–perhaps with the money Microsoft just made by dumping Razorfish–in front of News Corp. (NWS) and Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, both of which have search deals with Google that expire in the next year or so.

So says Viacom’s MTV, which reached that conclusion after testing various ad units in more than 50 million video clips it ran across its various sites. Viacom (VIA) says the intro-and-overlay package works best for advertisers’ “brand lift,” which it defines via metrics like unaided awareness, aided awareness and purchase intent.

And, it insists, customers like it, too! You can see an example at the bottom of this post, as well as a schematic that shows the order and timing of the ads.

This isn’t necessarily groundbreaking stuff: Overlays combined with another ad message have been popular with advertisers for some time. And when a company that makes its money selling ads boasts about how great its ads are, it’s best to accept those claims with just a pinch of reserved skepticism.

But these kinds of studies and promotions are taken seriously within the ad business, and Web publishers of all sorts are eager to find new ad formats (see–or try to ignore–the new ginormous ads rolling out this summer).

Meanwhile, as MediaPost notes, Publicis’s VivaKi is working with video providers, including Hulu, CBS (CBS), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), to produce its own “killer ad unit,” which is expected to debut next year. And Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which once avoided ads like the plague, is now trying every possible combination it can find.

It’s now very old news that the online ad market is going to get roughed up next year. But by how much? If you want, you can take a gander at this week’s prognostications from Interpublic (IPG), WPP and Publicis. But online ad sales people I talk to say there really isn’t much point in placing any bets on 2009 until the end of this month.

That’s because ad sales have basically stopped until the end of the holiday season, I’m told.

There are some exceptions: If you want, say, prime placement at Yahoo (YHOO) to promote your blockbuster over the July 4th weekend, you have to pay up now. And Google’s (GOOG) search ads aren’t purchased in advance, anyway. But in general, no one wants to commit money to the Web until they see how they did in December.

That may sound like common sense, but it’s a change from past years, and it’s a story I keep hearing. Latest example: A sales executive from a very, very large online publisher told me he has multiple seven- and eight-figure ad deals hammered out and ready to go. But buyers have walked away and are letting the deals sit for the rest of the month, until they assess their holiday sales.

My ad executive is an optimistic sort (obviously), so he figures they’ll sign the paperwork eventually. But he also assumes that said buyers will try to use this month’s data as a hammer to knock down prices by 10 percent or more. I’ll check back at the end of the month, and see how that optimism is holding up.