LookSmart Ltd. announced this week the launch of their new enhanced AdCenter with improved functionality including Daily budgets (versus monthly) which give you more control of your distribution and spend. You will now be in distribution every day of the month.

Google AdWords has finally launched a standalone tool where advertisers can get traffic and cost information for keywords without needing to login to their AdWords accounts to do so. Data included in the results are keywords/minimum bid, maximum CPC/predicted status, search volume, estimated average CPC, estimated ad positions, potential clicks per day and potential cost per day.

Yahoo! Inc has put a rough date window on the launch of its long-anticipated upgrade to its Search Marketing service, its search-oriented advertising platform that competes with Google Inc's AdWords platform.

Yahoo today revealed plans to roll out an entirely revamped online search advertising system this autumn, in the hope of catching global leader Google.

Google China has censored their search results to remove certain sites and listings that are deemed by the Chinese government. However, an advertiser has discovered a loophole in the censoring system that results in these censored sites showing up in google.cn search results via the Google AdWords sponsored listings program.

ThreadWatch release that shows Microsoft has purchased DeepMetrix, a Web analytics company. The purchase is to enable Microsoft to "deliver new Web analytics applications in future releases of Microsoft adCenter." Last year Google acquired Urchin, and then renamed it to Google Analytics in November and began AdWords integration soon after. Microsoft will possibly do the same.

In what is cracking up to be a big week in search engine marketing news (thinking Yahoo’s new search technology, Google Health, MSN adCenter), some European bloggers are noticing a new channel for the serving of local targeted Google AdWords (yes, local is HOT); Google Earth AdWords.

While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touted the US arrival of his company's Google AdWords killer, potential customers who use the Firefox browser found their attempts to join AdCenter were being killed by a lack of cross-browser compatibility.

While MSN adCenter has been in pilot mode since mid-October, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is announcing the official launch of adCenter at Thursday's MSN Strategic Account Summit... as well as the new name change to Microsoft adCenter.

Google announced a "quality change" to the AdWords ad delivery system. Danny Sullivan explained that the ads displayed on a search result page will differ in quantity based on the commercial nature of the keyword phrase.