The news and commentary you're used to seeing here will soon begin to appear over in ClickZ's regular news section. To subscribe to all our news content, please see our e-mail newsletter and RSS feed subscription pages.

As for the back-story: we created the ClickZ News Blog in 2005 as an experiment in format - a way for our reporters to cover digital marketing outside the confines of traditional journalism. In doing so, we intended to follow in the footsteps of entrepreneurial news organizations like TechCrunch, Politico, PaidContent, and others that prioritize chasing tips and fleshing out back-stories over covering press releases.

It's served that purpose well. Over the past three years the blog has built a solid following of marketers who look to it for breaking news, analysis, and aggregated content from around the Web.

However, it also has its drawbacks. Publishing it requires us to maintain a separate CMS, taxonomy, and analytics tools. And it lacks its own e-mail newsletter, a key way we deliver other content to you.

More importantly, we've come to the conclusion that some readers are confused - understandably so - about the difference between ClickZ News, our flagship daily reporting package, and the more casual and freewheeling ClickZ News Blog.

To cure these ills, we've decided simply to combine the two sections. As a result, our regular industry coverage will soon be flavored with some "bloggy" conventions, such as use of the first person and aggregated news posts. As we go through these changes, rest assured ClickZ's news team remains committed to the fundamentals of journalism, including in-depth reporting and analysis.

The integration will take place in about one week. Meanwhile, please head over to our e-mail newsletter and RSS feed subscription pages to ensure you continue to receive this content.

In a blog post, Sloan confirmed his appointment, and said his role would involve "everything at the intersection of Twitter and media." It's unclear at this point if that will include anything directly marketing related, but the assumption is that said partnerships are likely to include some kind of sponsorship element.

According to Sloan, he will work alongside existing media partnership Twitter staffer, Chloe Sladden, both of which previously held positions at Current TV. He starts mid-February.

Here's a screen-grab from the video that shows (apologies for the blurriness) the Video section center-left:

But of course, as Steve Jobs himself showed at the product unveiling on Wednesday, Flash doesn't work on the iPad:

It's not the end of the world - a marketer fudging the truth in a sales pitch. But shame on Apple for trying to sneak this by the gadget-conscious universe. That's almost like Patrick Stewart showing up at a Trekkie convention wearing a toupee and expecting nary a double-take.

And, The Senate Conservatives Fund PAC is running display ads to promote their Rubio fundraising effort - even to people outside the Sunshine State. The ad uses a photo of Crist pictured in cozy contact with the President. I just spotted one on Newsbusters, where I was reading a very important story about how the Obama Girl thinks the Prez needs to focus more on job creation.

The Republicans have become big on advertising for all sorts of things. Yesterday, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's PAC ran display and search ads on Google to promote his rebuttal to last night's State of the Union Address. If you did a search on "state of the union" you may have seen one.

But what do media buyers think about this stuff? I asked Derek Leedy,VP, account director at Mediasmith, who responded via e-mail. To Leedy, comScore and Quantcast or other audience measurement firms are complementary data sources - all of value when it comes to planning and buying online ads.

"There can't be too many data sources for media buyers - to choose one over the other for all cases is a cop out," he told me.

Leedy on Why comScore/Quantcast is Apples/Oranges:

I believe that the scuffle stems from a misunderstanding about the distinction between the services. Quancast has a great hybrid methodology that captures traffic levels, demographics, frequency and profiles which we can then use to target 'look alikes' in other sites.

ComScore has a long track record of passive data and panel data that enables us to create plans and strategies for long term campaigns.

...ComScore is suffering a backlash for charging significant dollars for what appears to be free information for quite some time. That isn't the real case. They offer much deeper analytics and triangulation of the audience and sites.

On Real-Time Data:

Everything is about "real time" right now, and buyers want actionable and effective data quick and cheap. Quantcast is better positioned to serve this need to capture individual profiles and bring the message to the target audience.

ComScore, however, will continue to offer solid data from which we can create sound campaigns.

Well, that may be about to change -- if only slightly -- as Google modifies its tactics for delivering these messages. From now on, the company plans to deliver some ads in Gmail based on the content of previous messages -- a version of behavioral targeting it already practices in its search results. The move allows Google to dip into a larger pool of user data to match a consumer to potentially relevant ads.

This is something Google didn't do before. For instance, a person who reads many e-mails on the subject of miniature trains is probably accustomed to seeing ads for toy freight cars and cabooses adjacent to those messages. But chances are he's never seen them next to happy birthday messages from his great aunt Bea. Beginning over the next few days, that changes. That contextually pointless birthday message will in all likelihood contain the same train-related ads the other ones do.

In a blog post on the shift, Google sought to reassure Gmail users about the privacy risk associated.

"To show these ads, our systems don't need to store any extra information -- Gmail just picks a different recent email to match," it stated. "The process is entirely automated: no humans are involved in selecting ads, and no email or personal information is shared with advertisers."

Google also posted the below video to drive home the same point.

Apple, Microsoft Discuss Giving Bing Top iPhone Billing
BusinessWeek
Microsoft search engine may become default on iPhone.

Apple Sees New Money in Old Media
WSJ
More details on upcoming tablet device and Apple's talks with book and magazine publishers.

140 Proof Rolls Out Ad Network For Twitter Clients
TechCrunch
Ad network bypasses Twitter completely and allows third party clients sell ad space.

YouTube Takes a Small Step Into the Film Rental Market
New York Times
Experiment begins with five movies, all from independent filmmakers.

At Hulu, 'Free' May Soon Turn Into 'Fee'
L.A. Times
Video site considers charging for episodes of popular shows.

Google Grabs More Office Space in Manhattan
NY Observer
Signs deal for 57,000 additional square feet in Chelsea building.

AOL Launches Knowledge and Research Property
Owl
Owl.com will likely be a repository for uch of the content assigned by the company's new Seed.com content development platform.

And, yes, you can still search for naughty words. I tried. It works.

The Nevada Republican primary isn't till June, but Lowden and her primary rival Danny Tarkanian are both running ads in the hopes of building awareness, signups, and donations. In addition to the requisite Google AdWords stuff, Lowden is also running both negative and positive display ads. I've spotted them on sites including OnTheIssues.org, and RealClearPolitics.

Lowden is serving up messages like, "Defeat Harry Reid Once & For All," and "Tark" wants to "Retire Harry Reid." Meanwhile, users who search for generic Nevada Senate race related keywords get ads from Reid's camp linking to his site's "seniors" page: "The Alliance for Retired Americans endorsed Sen. Harry Reid."

No, this is not a scientific measurement of these campaigns' AdWords buy -- just an observation.

And, in my searches on terms like "Harry Reid racist," and "Harry Reid is not a racist," I get no ads - much less well-optimized links to his campaign's site refuting the notion that his Obama comments were racist or that he should step down. Yet, his campaign site features an excerpt from a Las Vegas Sun op ed entitled, "Reid has stood by African-Americans."

The Obama campaign used search to refute claims that he is a Muslim throughout the '08 election season. I'm sure some would argue it would make sense for Reid to do something similar - ?

Symbian OS Has Highest Mobile Click-through Rates
TechCrunch
December data show Symbian users click more than people with Android and iPhone devices.

AP, Yahoo Near Deal on Content Use
Wall Street Journal
Negotiations may help resolve how news orgs work with major Web companies.

Old Billboards in Google Street View to Get Virtual Updates
Fast Company
Patent suggests company might replace out of date billboards with ads sold in-house.

Coke Drops Campaign Sites in Favor of Social Media
NMA
Community platforms strike another blow against the branded microsite.

Check out ClickZ's full day training workshop on Monday, Feb. 1, in Miami Beach.

ClickZ Expert contributor Jeanne Jennings, an e-mail marketing consultant based in Washington, DC, and Tamara Gielen, an e-mail marketing coach from Belgium, are teaming up to provide tips for improving conversion rates, integrating social media with your e-mail strategy, and implementing the latest best practices in layout, copy, and design.

If you've signed up for the workshop, please be sure to send samples of your work to Jeanne and Tamara to be critiqued. Jeanne can be reached on Twitter at @jeajen and Tamara at @tamaragielen.

The workshop is being held in conjunction with the 2010 Email Evolution Conference, sponsored by the Email Experience Council and the DMA, from Feb. 1-3, at the same venue in Miami Beach.

Separate reports in The Guardian and Spiegel Online described the cuts. Four German offices will close, in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. In the U.K., the company is also planning an unspecified but significant number of cuts. It's still weighing whether to close its France office, reportedly. AOL will reportedly dismiss many staff by Wednesday this week.

One bright spot in the carnage: Europe-based ad serving business AdTech has been spared the axe.

That's not surprising in light of recent comments made by Armstrong. Speaking last week at a Citi investment conference, he praised AdTech and listed it among AOL properties he says have been undervalued or "forgotten" after the Time Warner/AOL merger. Others on that list include Moviefone, MapQuest, and media platform Winamp.

Armstrong noted AdTech recently had a record day for serving ads in Europe, and he said the company represented one area where AOL was competitive with Google and Microsoft -- which both operate in-house ad serving platforms.

The firm's recruitment page lists a number of new positions, including a "Product Marketing Manager, Monetization," and software engineers for "Monetization Infrastructure." The job descriptions state that the firm is "looking for new members of staff to work on cutting edge monetization projects."

In October, Twitter agreed deals with Google and Microsoft allowing its data to be integrated with the the two major search engines. In December, it then announced it was trialling premium features with some corporate users. The firm has repeatedly expressed it is not interested in pursuing traditional display ads, but that it hopes to monetise its audience in ways more suited to the platform.