As Western Civilization spirals rapidly downward in a haze of bad mortgages and government bailouts, the search advertising industry continues to thrive, according to a slew of new reports released in recent days. How long before the rest of the ad industry comes after the search folks with pitchforks and flaming time sheets? Not that search doesn't have its problems. Poor babies are apparently struggling with scalability issues as their business expands at such an incredible rate. Search spending surged by nearly 27% during the third quarter compared to the same period last year, according to SearchIgnite. But retailers increased …

You might think covering an Apple event is all glitzy glamour and complimentary iPods, but not so. It's a journalistic cattle call, complete with pushing and shoving and "poop-stained towels," apparently. But don't dare miss it, or your site will lose out on millions of page views and advertiser dollars. Today, Ars Technica lets its readers in on the experience. The whole thing starts with maybe five days notice, giving you just enough time to pay exorbitant fees for last-minute flights with multiple stopovers. Then when you arrive, you have to deal with gobs of security, fascist PR people, …

Google has unveiled a new tool to help advertisers who don't want to pay for the services of a designer create their own display ads. The "Display Ad Builder" allows Ad Sense members to create simple graphical ads and distribute them across Google's network. "If you've wanted to expand beyond your text ad campaigns, or if you've been looking for an easier way to build display ads, this tool can help," wrote Trevor Claiborne of the Inside AdWords team earlier this week in a blog post about the feature. The tool allows marketers to build creative units for all …

Looks like someone saw "The Dark Knight" one too many times. Remember the scene when Batman unveiled his master plan for locating the Joker, that giant computer that listened in on every cell phone call in Gotham? Well the British government does, and it's coming under fire for proposing a similar plan to keep track of calls in the U.K. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has proposed the creation of a central database of all mobile phone and internet traffic so the police can better perform their job. While the database wouldn't actually listen to calls (British scientists are apparently …

Did you know that presidential hopeful Barack Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance? Or that he intentionally snubbed U.S. troops on a recent trip to the Middle East? How about the fact that the only difference between Obama and Osama is BS? (Get it?) If the answer is no, then clearly you have not been reading the Web site of the Sacramento County Republican Party. According the Sacramento Bee, that site has been posting bumper sticker-like graphics with slogans such as "Waterboard Obama" in recent weeks. That image was removed Tuesday in response to inquiries from the …

In case you hadn't noticed, the market is suddenly flooded with smart phones. Despite the tough economy, expect iPhones and similar devices to be at the top of consumers' wish lists this holiday season. Which all adds up to one thing: Mobile search marketing is set to become the fastest growing field in all of digital advertising. There is no shortage of companies ready to claim the mantle: JumpTap, Medio Systems and ChaCha, along with Google, Yahoo and MSN, are all developing mobile-dedicated search options. But no one has emerged as dominant yet, and local search agency TMP this week …

Few doubts that the credit crisis and ensuing stock market plummet will eventually take its toll on digital ad spending. The question is when. According to several executives at a Media and Money conference yesterday in New York City, the answer could be very, very soon. Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer of Microsoft's Avenue A | Razorfish, said publishers are now anticipating trouble hitting financial targets for the fourth quarter. "We saw a decline in financial services in Q2, and automotive is starting to pull back," he said. Though he does expect digital advertising to fare better in the …

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is officially here, and Ars Technica has an in-depth look at its features and functionality. Mozilla hopes to make this latest version a strong incremental improvement with user interface enhancements, new features, and increased support for emerging web standards. The new server includes an improved JavaScript engine, which supposedly makes it faster than Google Chrome's V8 engine - except it isn't quite enabled by default, and appears buggy. It also includes a W3C Geolocation Specification, which allows Web applications to obtain information about the user's geographical location through a simple JavaScript API. There are other …