PPC Hero, a web site devoted to all of the latest on pay-per-click advertising, recently conducted a survey looking to find the best second tier PPC search engines.

The survey asked over 100 users “Which second tier search engine produced the best results for you?” and eZanga.com turned up in the results, garnering 1 percent of the vote as one of just seven search engines named in the responses.

The report, which can be read here, also includes a chart depicting the results.

“To generate supplemental traffic, leads, and revenue, these search engines can be a useful resource (if managed and optimized properly),” it reads. “Also, diversifying your search marketing efforts can help stabilize your performance just in case you should incur any fluctuations in the “big 3.” And for certain advertisers, these search engines may even work just as well as Google (gasp!). This is some food for thought when creating a strategy to expand your PPC efforts beyond Google, Yahoo or MSN.”

Reports this week revealed that search advertising spending is steadily increasing in 2009, nearly matching the spending levels from a year ago.

Search marketing agencies such as Search Ignite and Efficient Frontier disclosed data that showed their clients’ spending had increased to between 5 and 10 percent from second quarter results. Year-over-year spending is still down nearly 5 percent, according to Efficient Frontier.

That trend has been witnessed at eZanga, where search spending has increased by 70 percent from last year.

The news brings a great deal of hope to the search marketing industry after the economic recession made an impact in spending over the last year. Reports from eWeekEurope, ClickZ and Advertising Age give some of the details about the recent rise in ad spending and what it could mean for the immediate future of search marketing as a promising fourth quarter begins.

Online Advertising has become the go-to way to advertise in recent years. But some businesses may not be aware of just how many different ways they can reach customers on the web to promote their products and services. Not only that, some may not know which of those ways is the best way to get a better Return on Investment.

A new article at BizReport.com aims to show businesses that instead of choosing between SEM and Display advertising, it just might be beneficial to combine the two to get the necessary results. “Why you should consider a multi-platform approach” by Kristina Knight points out that the two work well together and eZanga CEO Rich Kahn was interviewed to help explain why:

“Display ads have always been high on branding but haven’t been high on conversions. Search has been high on conversions but not on branding. When you combine the two, they are very powerful,” Kahn said. “It all comes down to the budget of the customer.”

Read the article in its entirety at BizReport.com for more on what Kahn has to say about combining multiple advertising platforms and why it is a favorable option in a struggling economy.

eZanga founder and CEO Rich Kahn is back in the news. Kahn once again joins the debate on which online marketing strategy gets the best results for businesses - SEO or SEM.

In an article published by Target Marketing Magazine Senior Editor Heather Fletcher, Kahn is one of three online advertising experts to lend his opinion to the often-debated topic.

From the article:

“”If you put up a campaign with search engine marketing, you can put up a bunch of tests, a bunch of different campaigns, test them all—and you can do that all in the first day,” Kahn says. As for the most obvious ranking aspects, he adds, SEM always ends up with the top rankings, no matter how high the SEO results are. And beyond that, paid search has access to more than Google.com. Google teams with other sites, so paid search customers also have access to those sites, Kahn says.”

Kahn goes on to talk about how personal experiences through eZanga help lend credence to this view, which you can read in the full article here.

The Targeting Marketing Magazine website garners close to 26,500 visitors monthly.

For the second year in a row, eZanga has made the annual Inc. 5000 list which chronicles the 5000 fastest growing private companies in the country. Also for the second straight year, eZanga was ranked as Delaware’s fastest growing private company in the Advertising and Marketing industry.

With a growth of 375.7 percent, eZanga ranked at No. 774 on the list, checking in as the 16th-ranked company in metro areas consisting of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. eZanga was also the 73rd-ranked company in the advertising/marketing field in the country.

The August issue of Infotech and Telecom News features an article written by Phil Britt on new Microsoft search engine Bing’s potential impact on Google.

Titled “Bing Debut May Challenge Google’s Search Dominance”, the article discusses Google’s reaction to Bing’s launch as well as where the industry may go from here. eZanga CEO Rich Kahn was quoted in the piece, giving his take on what may lie ahead in the battle for search supremacy.

Infotech and Telecom News is a monthly newspaper which focuses on the social movement for market-based reform of the nations laws on information technology and telecommunications. The paper has a circulation of roughly 11,000 and has close to 68,200 visitors on its website monthly.

The eZanga.com team is out and about at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in San Jose, Ca.

The 11th annual event kicked off Monday and will last through Friday. eZanga is one of over 100 companies there to talk all things search marketing and optimization. You can follow what the eZanga crew is up to by getting on HopOnThis.com and checking out Jimmy Hoppa’s photo gallery. The gallery will be updated each day with all of the interesting events and happenings at SES San Jose.

News hit the internet on Wednesday that eZanga has rolled out its contextual advertising platform, adding to its many online services.

The article was picked up by many major industry outlets in short order, including Yahoo Finance, Earth Times and News Blaze. It details how the new service works and why eZanga’s integrated online marketing campaigns make a great option for advertisers. The article reads:

“eZanga’s contextual advertising technology uses geographic and demographic targeting, allowing advertisers to specify their target audiences based on their marketing goals. Using the system, advertisers are able to target text, graphics, rich media, pop under or interstitial ads with keywords, locations, time/day targets and channels of interest. eZanga offers pay-per-click, pay-per-view and pay-per-visit models for eZanga Contextual customers.”

WebProNews featured eZanga CEO Rich Kahn in an article about the company’s recent foray in combining display advertising with search.

The article, “Search Ads Convert Better With Display”, gives Kahn the opportunity to discuss the many advertising services which eZanga provides, as well as why advertisers should turn to the company for all of its marketing needs:

“Our new eZanga Display product is not only another place to buy display on premium sites (Yahoo, LinkedIn, CNN.com, BusinessWeek, Facebook, etc) but also offers our customers some advanced optimizations,” he said. “We can optimize a campaign based on the phone calls we generate, online sales, leads or fill in forms. We are not here to focus on impressions or clicks (any network can do that) we are here to focus on conversions, both online and offline.”

The article goes on to examine the future of display advertising in difficult economic times and how eZanga has been able to maintain growth over the past year.

With the latest news on the search partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft hitting the web hard the last few days, the outlook on the industry’s landscape was due for a longer look.

The UK’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer, decided to take a look at the present and future battle for Google’s top spot in search with an article titled ‘Rivals Strive to Top Google in Quest for ‘Perfect Search’.

eZanga CEO Rich Kahn chimes in the artcle with about the future of eZanga’s search and the industry in general.

The Observer, which gets 29 million visitors monthly, published the article Sunday. It was also picked up Monday by Buzzle.com, an aggregation news site which recieves 5 million visitors a month.