eZanga is a company that prides itself on providing online advertisers with local, regional, and national advertising with high ROI. The company has now launched display advertising with search.

CEO Rich Kahn tells WebProNews about the significance of this, and talks about why things are looking bright for online advertising, and specifically display advertising.

the Association of National Advertisers along with B2B Magazine released results from a survey, which found that marketers are increasingly using social media platforms. No surprise there. What’s more interesting is how they are using them.

According to the results, about 66 percent of marketers utilized social media this year, up from just 20% in 2007. Half of those surveyed use viral videos, up from a quarter in 2007.

Google launched an interesting new feature to the AdWords interface that lets you see what could have been if you had bid differently. The feature, called the Bid Simulator, shows you the potential impact of your bid on your advertising results.

"While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows you to explore what could have happened if you had set different keyword-level bids," says Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

Are you tired of reading about the Microsoft Yahoo deal yet? Obviously not or you wouldn’t be reading this. There has been a whole lot of coverage to digest, and there will certainly be a whole lot more as the deal gets scrutinized and continues its journey to fruition.

Worldwide shipments of cell phones in the second quarter increased 4.7 percent compared to the first, according to a report from iSuppli.

The growth marked the first successive increase for the market since the third quarter of 2008. Global shipments reached 265 million units in the second quarter, up from 253 million in the first.

According to Email Data Source, Twitter has become the most linked to social media outlet in email marketing campaigns. Email Data Source collects, analyzes, organizes, and archives millions of marketing messages to provide competitive intelligence and analytics to the email marketing community.

On Tuesday, we told you about the launch of Twitter’s new homepage. The revamped design sports a sleek look that is pretty easy on the eye. But, once you get past the pleasing aesthetics, you’ll also see that Twitter has added a search capability and popular topics, which in turn could mean an influx of Twitterers.

It appears that the number of new Twitter users has slowed a bit over the past month, although it’s still growing significantly. Regardless, it hasn’t prevented the number of Tweets from jumping.

The AP is known for having some fairly unconventional tactics toward the use of their content online. Sure, a company should be concerned with how their content is being used online… but how far is too far?

Do you agree with the AP’s new strategy? Tell us.

Episodes of the hit show "Lost" have – at least in a limited fashion – finally found their way to Hulu.  Fans can now watch all of the first season, along with the last six episodes of the fifth.

We’ll admit: this move is sure to have its detractors.  DVD sales of "Lost" have been strong, and pirated episodes are (supposed to be) easy to find for free online.  So for ABC to make episodes available this late in the show’s run and also be stingy seems a little pointless.

Security firm F-Secure discovered that Twitter has begun blocking links to malicious sites when users try to post them. Twitter has not acknowledged this with an announcement yet, but users (at least some) are getting the following message when trying to post a link to a known malware site:

"Oops! Your tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!"

JetBlue and United have joined the ranks of companies like Pizza Hut and Dell that have successfully promoted things on Twitter.  These airlines make extra-cheap tickets available through the site, thereby helping themselves fill planes and arguably doing consumers a favor.

As if there wasn’t enough change on the Internet these days the Associated Press (AP) is now putting together a program that will cost anyone who uses anything that they publish a minimum of $12.50. While that may seem a bit much it gets even worse when you discover that that price is for using just 5 words or less of their material!

YouTube has yet another new—or should I say news?—feature: News Near You.

Online job openings increased by 700 to 3,295,500 in July, according to data released today by the Conference Board.

Nationally, online job demand has been relatively flat over the last several months after sharp declines in December 2008 and January 2009.Nationally, there were over four unemployed looking for work for every advertised online opening, as the number of unemployed increased even as the number of advertised openings remained steady.

BPM Forum and AVG Technologies released some interesting findings from the Protect the Press Poll, a survey of the cyber security habits of the working press. The biggest takeaway is that the supposedly well-informed members of the press are no better at protecting themselves online than the average user.

Last week we told you about Mozilla reaching a monumentus milestone, 1 billion total downloads. In celebration of the achievement they’ve launched a new site, One Billion + You.

Netflix announced today an agreement with Disney-ABC Television Group to stream a number of the broadcasters TV shows.

Netflix will now begin streaming the first five seasons of "Lost," seasons four and five of "Desperate Housewives," season five of "Grey’s Anatomy," and seasons one and two of "Legend of the Seeker." Many of the episodes, including the first four seasons of "Lost" are now available on Netflix. The rest will be available in the coming months, beginning in September.

Back in June, YouTube made a couple of announcements that indicated the most popular video site in the world was planning on taking news seriously. YouTube invited major publishers to become partners, and they also launched a new resource for citizen reporters called the YouTube Reporters’ Center.

The Nintendo DSi, which has sold over 1.7 million units in the US alone, includes photo and voice manipulation features. Today, users will have the ability to upload their stuff directly to Facebook.

Nintendo announced that after 5pm Pacific Time today, the Nintendo DSi will offer Facebook Connect photo integration. Users of the DSi system and the DSi Camera application will be able to take pictures with either of the system’s two cameras and upload their photos directly to their Facebook profile.

A while back, StumbleUpon launched web stumbling, which allowed users to enjoy their StumbleUpon experience without having to download the toolbar, which was previously a requirement. If you’ve been a user of the service for a significant length of time, you’ve probably grown quite accustomed to that toolbar. Sometimes I forget it’s not just part of Firefox.

This morning, a strong tie between Google and Apple was dissolved.  Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, resigned from Apple’s board of directors.

This development doesn’t necessarily mean that Google and Apple are becoming hostile.  The two companies have been good corporate friends for many years, with Schmidt serving on Apple’s board of directors since August of 2006.

Earlier this year, you may recall that Google launched its search options, which allow users to have more customized control over their search results. It includes ways for users to browse results by videos, forums, reviews, etc.

Microsoft’s Bing slightly increased its share of the U.S. search market in July to 9.41 percent from 8.23 percent in June, according to analytics firm StatCounter.

Microsoft and Yahoo combined took 20.36 percent of the search market, up slightly from 19.27 percent in June. Google still leads the U.S. search market with 77.54 percent in July (78.48% in June).