YouTube has launched a new home page that provides easy access to subsciber channels, including links to videos shared by contacts on Google+. It also gives advertisers a new way to connect with site visitors. The features include a link in the top left-hand corner allowing visitors to save their favorite channels and new templates for content creators. YouTube has to do something to steamline the search process, with more than eight hours of video …

Justin Vanning explains AdWords social extensions and what they can do for paid-search ads. Although the tool enables marketers to link Google+ business pages to Google AdWords accounts, he lays out a disclaimer that there are many questions remaining about the brand new feature. Vanning does his best to cover as much conent as possible, guiding us through the process of setting up social extensions and providing insight on the benefits. 

Once again, Google is preparing to help track Santa by launching a series of holiday games and fun facts about NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense platform. On Dec. 24, the platform will begin tracking Santa in real-time on the Web site using Google Maps and in 3D with Google Earth, as well as on Google Maps for mobile. 

Jessica Cates, who has run ads on LinkedIn for a client, offers tips to help marketers become more successful with paid ads in the social network. She outlines rules and procedures for setting up business accounts, ad rotation, leads, and targeting. Cates details the similarities and differences between LinkedIn paid search with Google and Bing. For example, the LinkedIn ads don't track conversions yet, and can choose from either CPC or CPM bidding.

Can music cloud service generate enough revenue to sustain the business model for companies, copyright holders, music publishers and rights owners? While this has everything to do with cloud-based music services and nothing to do with search engine marketing -- not yet, anyway -- it's easy to see how the two will eventually merge with similar technology. Take Pandora, for example. Today, the Internet music service streams ads on mobile devices after a specific number of songs -- but that could change in the future by identifying the content on the phone and targeting specific ads to devices.