Digg recently celebrated its’ second birthday with beautiful technical and functional improvements. Digg users are now able to ‘Digg’ their favorite podcasts on the Digg podcasting homepage by category. Digg hopes this marketing strategy will bring in web users who will use Digg as their first stop when looking for podcasts.

If this is successful, look for Digg to launch a whole new slew of features and content areas. Another new feature of Digg is the ‘Top 10 Stories” area where users can see the hottest stories of the day. Seperate ‘Top 10′ areas are made available for each category on the website. Other changes include Digg being widescreen now with a flexible layout for bigger computer screens and video enhancements which allow you to view videos directly on Digg with a ‘lightbox’ feature.

PayPerPost, a place for bloggers and advertisers to connect and profit, has made a significant change on Monday which will force bloggers to disclose that they are being paid for their posts. This is due to a recent move by the Federal Trade Commission to force word-of-mouth advertisers to disclose financial inventives to promote products. The move doesn’t completely fix the problem but it is a definite move in the right direction for the company.

Internet comics are getting their own geeky network called Project Wonderful this year for Christmas. The network will be a hot-spot for advertisers to place their ads next to online comics with a cost per day pay rate which will be based on a comic website’s popularity. Advertisers can be outbid and knocked off a website just like the Google Adwords network. Ad buyers can track what ads are on what comic sites currently including their click through and impression rate which will help an advertisers determine whether or not to buy ad space.

I was surfing YouTube today and noticed that Verizon Wireless (cell phones) has created a little immitation videos of those ‘through the years’ type videos that users create and upload on to YouTube. The video is pretty neat if you are big into seeing old cell phones from the 1980’s gradually transitioned into the 2000’s phone designs.

I would find this video much more appealing if the developers had transitioned the age of the guy in relation (slowly wrinkling) in addition to just giving him a different phone and different outfit in every video frame. If you want to know what I’d like to see done differently, look at this OldeEnglish user’s video of a ‘picture everyday’ video. See, now that video made you laugh didn’t it?

Phishing scams will frequently occur as more and more people begin shopping online this holiday season. What you might not know is that Adage is reporting that phishers are starting to use nonfinancial consumer brands such as Coke and McDonalds as bait - giving away sweepstakes, promotions, and other giveaways are luring devices.

The threat of phishers blasting the one-on-one relationships that businesses are trying to build with consumers online is affecting the trustworthiness of online purchases. This soft of scam needs to be addressed by marketers and programmers immediately if something can be done to thwart e-criminals.

“That red Coke logo is a shiny lure to get you to go through the load-in on your inbox, open up and then click through,” said John Roberts, VP-product, OpenDNS, a year-old domain-name-system service platform. “Anything which can take decades of brand promise and put it to use for criminal activity is going to be tried.”

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Can you help Mister Reach solve the mystery? Like something out of a Scooby Doo movie, Johnson and Johnson and Reach Toothbrush have a new online interactive website ‘mystery game’ with Mr. Reach. The game is called ‘The Mouth of Mystery’. You can play the game at the Fuel Games website.

By the way, what the hell is with Mr. Reach’s tounge? Is my tounge really going to get the freaking big from brushing my teeth? What are these advertisers trying to convey. Is there a ’sexual implication’ behind the Mr. Reach character?

It’s been noted that Lou Dobbs‘ climb through the cable news ratings has taken a page from the Fox News playbook — that is, a crusading arrogance under the guise of “fair and balanced.” So it’s not terribly surprising that CNN would cough up some loose ad change to tout Dobbs to part of Fox News’ Post-reading audience. Still, it’s an unusual alliance between News Corp. and CNN.

These announcements of free advertising dollars are from the Paul Allen blog. You can now get a ton of free promotions thanks to pay per click advertising. You will received a combined $575 in free website promotion tools from paid search ads.

• MSN ($200 Free)- MSN is offering you $200 free after you pay the very small $5 activation fee for their advertising program.
• LookSmart ($300 Free) - LookSmart will give you $300 free advertising bucks to start promoting your website, blog, or online business. Use this coupon code at checkout: SESCHQ4
• Enhance Interactive ($25 Free) - They will give you a considerable $25 to start with.
• Ask ($50 Free) - Ask.com will give you a $50 credit on your account. Enter promo code SESCHI06 during the checkout process.
• Google AdWords ($50 Free) - Now, this coupon, from what I’ve read does not seem to have any expiration to it but my instincts tell me that it’s only going to be available during the Christmas season.

Zillow.com was recently opened up by Expedia (DOT COM!) founder Richard Barton who wants to quickly gain ground in the competitive U.S. property business. The Zillow website is a user generated content site similar in concept to MySpace.

Homeowners and real estate agents alike can use the website to upload properties, photos, descriptions, and improvements along selling prices. The Financial times reports that Zillow will combine elements from Myspace, Wikipedia, and Craigstlist.

Currently, Zillow has 3.5 million members but the site still faces competition from Move.com and other similar concept websites.

Chillis has launched a contest in which you can enter a new version of the classic hit “Baby Back Ribs” song and you can hear the 10 finalists and vote for your favorite on MySpace. All votes will be tallied on December 22nd and the winner gets to be a “Rock Star The A Day” and travel to Los Angeles to meet with a record label. Some of the entrants sound horrible but give the website a go.

I’d still prefer to hear “Fat Bastard” from Austin Powers sing the song like he did in the movie.

A new study reveals the long awaited belief that niche websites receive more ad attention from visitors. Smaller niche websites are more likely to draw attention to ads than non-niche websites the study reveals. The report is from Media-Screen and is slated for release sometime next week so check back. Media Screen surveyed over 1,300 broadband internet users and asked them to scale how likely they were to be interested in products on any given website. Respondents gave 42% of the small sites their top ratings compared to 39% for larger websites. Smaller websites it appears are better at engaging users and capturing the attention of consumers. Read

The Search Engine Journal reports that terrorists linked with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are benefiting from Google Adsense ads and are stealing from Google advertisers by using click fraud programs which generate revenue for their operations. The new report claims that insurgent based networks use robot clickers called ‘clickbots’ which are automated programs that click on Gogle ads and change IP address over and over again. According to the report, this is how the Adsense hustle for terrorists works;

1. Groups set up blogs and sites that serve Google AdSense ads
2. Commit click fraud on those sites
3. Collect revenue from Google
4. Donate revenue to “charities” that funnel funds to terror groups

ValueClick will ride the coattails of Google’s video ad success by launching a new product which will display advertisements in streaming videos. The ValueClick method will combine both publishers and advertisers alike and benefit both groups by increasing click through rates, interest, and sales conversions. ValueClick hopes advertisers will understand and adapt to the technology as the future of video ads holds true with the success of YouTube and related video social networking sites continue to grow exponentially. Read

A new series of studies from comScore and Avenue A/Razorfish point out that online advertisers should focus their online advertising dollars on search and display with major search engines such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Netork, and MSN Ad Center. The reports reveal that there was a direct correlation between advertising dollars spent per click and the rate of return on investment with actual purchases made through click throughs. The two highest quality ad placements were one’s placed on the left hand side of the screen and in textual format. Graphical images are still known to primarily affect in-the-future buys and brand recognition online. Read Reports

Yahoo Ad Publisher network has long been affiliated with high paying premium ads and available to publishers with only large amounts of traffic. Yahoo’s Wenda Harris Millard is working to change that structure and potentially increase ad sales by opening doors to non high-profile ad slots. The process has recently began as ClickZ points out but there is no indication as to what a non-premium ad slot is.