According to a story on Reuters, it appears that Google is planning on using their newfound acquisition of the DoubleClick ad server to launch a new (and free) Ad Manager service ... essentially providing a free ad server to publishers (mind you a service that mid to large size online publishers pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, a month for). I'm curious to see how this pans out, and exactly how it could translate into ad revenue for Google. I would imagine that Google-powered ads would perhaps run in the ad spots a percentage of the time.

I haven't yet had a chance to play around with it, but access to the Ad Manager is currently available on an invitation-only basis.