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As we've seen from some of the previews of the new layout, search is becoming more of a focal point for Facebook, and today's announcement seems to back that up. Microsoft and Facebook announced this morning an expanded partnership, making Bing the default search engine for Facebook's more than 400 million users worldwide.

The two companies also came to a "mutual decision" to allow Facebook to take over sole responsibility for advertisements on the social network, a move that we see as part of Facebook's continual progression toward becoming an ad provider.

Apple has posted a shocking, if vague, warning to iPhone app creators in its developer forums: submit an app that uses user location data "primarily" for targeting advertisements and that app will be sent right back to you to be changed.

Many mobile developers are planning on monetizing their apps precisely through location-based advertising. There's no clear criteria for how much advertising is too much, and perhaps Apple will exercise discretion in recognizing advertisements as merely supplemental to other features in many apps, but the language used by the company is wholly disconcerting and is another great example of the perils of developing on a closed platform like the iPhone. This is crazy.

Online advertising can, at times, be downright villainous. We've all fallen victim to the misleading "X" that opened up more windows instead of closing the one, or lured by ads that seemed to know all our personal information. But today, Facebook released a new set of terms for ad and offer networks that looks to help prevent dishonest advertising.

David Swain, a spokesperson for Facebook, said that the new terms are meant to create more accountability and faster enforcement when things run afoul.

Real-Time search engine OneRiot just announced that its advertising network RiotWise is now open to all developers. RiotWise is OneRiot's attempt to monetize real-time streams by focusing on trending topics and giving advertisers the opportunity to highlight their own content in these streams or through regular banner ads. The private beta of RiotWise began in October 2009 and the company has steadily opened up the service to more developers. Starting today, any developer who wants to implement OneRiot in an app can do so.

According to a new patent that was just granted to Google, the company could soon extend the reach of its advertising program in Google Maps to Street View. This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.

Hearst is showing the Skiff e-reader at CES this week, but the company also just announced a deal with Format Dynamics that focuses on a very different aspect of the online content business: printing hard copies of websites. Printing from most websites tends to result in wasting lots of paper on printing empty pages. Often, the layout of the site also doesn't look quite right on the printed page. Format Dynamics works with publishers to create printed pages that are professionally formatted - and in the process, the company also adds advertising to those pages.

Google just announced a number of major updates to Google Friend Connect (GFC), the company's set of tools that can bring social networking tools and widgets to any site. Today, Google is extending this functionality with a new 'Interests' section that helps a site's visitors to get to know each other, a newsletter tool and gadgets that display personalized content recommendations. Google now also allows site owners to connect this data they gather from their users with their AdSense accounts to display more highly targeted ads.

Last night, Amazon sent out emails to their Amazon Associates members touting the latest addition to the company's affiliate program: a new feature called "Share with Twitter." According to the email, participants can generate "tweetable" links to any Amazon product after first logging into their Associates account. By clicking on the "Share with Twitter" button from any Amazon product details page, members are delivered to the Twitter.com website. Here, a shortened link and a bit of auto-populated text are automatically filled in Twitter's "What are you doing?" text box. The included text can be edited to say whatever they want before posting or they can choose to just post as is. After updating Twitter, any person who clicks through on the link and makes a purchase will earn the participant referral fees payable through the Associates program.

According to mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, female iPhone users are the worst demographic in terms of interacting with mobile ads on the iPhone. The company, whose high-profile clients include Procter & Gamble, General Mills and American Express, has run 60+ mobile ad campaigns over the past two years. During that time, they've had the opportunity to study the engagement of iPhone users with their ads. So why are women ignoring the ads? Apparently, they're too busy actually using the apps.

Soon, you may start seeing company logos dotting the landscape on Google Maps. While Google has experimented with different types of ads in Google Maps on and off over the years, it now looks like Google is going to make another push to monetize Google Maps. While the details about this project are still quite hazy, it seems like Google plans to launch this program in at least the US and Australia in the next few weeks.

Obsessed with Facebook? You're not alone. The hours you spend logging on to update your status, post photos, and make comments on friends' walls is not simply a "phase" you're going through which will end sometime soon. It's a ongoing trend affecting everyone these days and it has serious implications for the online advertising industry.

According to new figures from Nielsen, the amount of time spent surfing social networking and blogging sites had tripled since last year, suggesting "a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used," says Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights at the company's online division.

French member of parliament Valerie Boyer recently proposed a law to include a disclaimer at the bottom of all enhanced press, political, art and advertising-based photographs. Backed by 50 other French members of parliament, Boyer's efforts aim to reduce the instances of eating disorders across the country. While the attempt is certainly a noble one given France's influence on the fashion world, enforcing the legislation may be another story. While Boyer has already managed to pass a charter against inciting skinniness, policing image doctoring may prove to be a much tougher task.

Publicis Groupe SA announced today the acquisition of Microsoft's Razorfish advertising agency for $530 million dollars. In a joint press release, the group announced that the deal will increase Publicis' ability to deliver digital campaigns and further elevates Razorfish's status as a leader in online marketing. According to Bloomberg, in exchange for Razorfish, Publicis will give Microsoft 6.5 million in shares - a deal that makes Microsoft a 3% owner of the advertising company.

Augmented reality -- or the addition of a layer to the world before your eyes (aka the "real world") using technology -- is the next big tech trend. Already making its debut in everything from mobile apps to kids toys, "AR" will clearly soon be talked about by everyone the way they used to talk about "social media" and "Web 2.0" before that.

While augmented reality has its uses -- although many of them just involve oohing and aahing at nifty apps -- this trend is already in danger of being over-hyped, even though it has barely gotten off the ground.

In today's blog post by Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser, Digg announced that it will be rolling out its beta ad program later this week. In addition to the community's existing banner ads, the company is launching an initial set of ads to appear in rotation with regular content. From here, users will interact with the ads in the same way they interact with articles - by digging, burying and commenting on them. Advertising with a high number of Diggs will fetch lower ad revenue and buried advertisers will be charged more.

Google just launched "Going Google" - a marketing campaign similar to the Spread Firefox to encourage companies to switch to Google Apps in the workplace. While millions already use Gmail, the campaign is aimed at luring business and enterprise users away from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Google already claims to serve more than 1.75 million companies and judging by the flashy campaign, it hopes to increase that number in the near future.

New York based video startup, blip.tv made a series of partnership announcements this morning at a live press conference held in the company's offices. Today, blip.tv is expanding their distribution network thanks to new partnerships with YouTube, Vimeo, NBC Local Media New York, and Roku while expanding their current relationships with other current distributors. Along with these deals, the company also revealed their completely revamped content owner dashboard, the central hub for managing media using their service.

According to Unwired View, Google Voice just filed an application with Fish and Richardson legal services on a patent that is suspected to monetize caller waiting on Google Voice.

The patent application lays claim to the methods and software "in which an indication of a telephone call being placed from a calling number is received, and a determination is made of an audio advertisement to play based on the calling number."

According to a new report from eMarketer, paid advertising on social networks in the US will drop 3% in 2009. In 2008, advertisers spent $1.175 billion on ads on social networks, but eMarketer predicts that this number will fall to $1.14 billion this year. The main culprit here is MySpace. EMarketer expects that ad spending on the social network will fall 15% in 2009. At the same time, it expects to see a 9% growth in ad spending on Facebook, and most other social networks are also doing just fine. EMarketer expects that this drop will be short-lived, however, and predicts a 13.2% increase in ad spending in 2010.

Three months ago we reported that Ads Had Come to Twitter and it was a pretty big deal - until Twitter promptly said the word "sponsored" was only appearing on the site in error. Now the "sponsored definitions" of certain Twitter "concepts" have appeared on the site again - and they sure look legit this time.

These first ads probably aren't going to bring in enough cash to fuel a micro-app acquisition spree by Twitter, but this is the first clear public indication of one way the company is bringing in revenue. It's funny - the ads have been live for about a week now and no one but a few small, alert blogs has written about them. (Seth Simonds in particular caught a really interesting international angle on the story.) It was big news three months ago and we believe it's still important.