ReadWriteWeb

Blackberry users in the U.S. barely click on mobile ads, while those who own a Symbian-powered phone click on more ads than anybody else. According to the latest data from mobile advertising optimization platform Smaato, the most interesting development with regards to mobile ads in the U.S. over the last month is the fact that click-through rates for users of Apple's iOS devices have increased dramatically.

Twitter has taken the first steps to begin inserting sponsored Tweets and Trending Topics into the Application Programming Interface (API) that 3rd party developers use to display search results to users. Additions to the technical code are being made now but no ads will actually apear until a later, undetermined date.

Developer advocate Matt Harris explained in an email to the Twitter developers email list this afternoon that the insertion of ads will be beta tested with a select group of developers before becoming generally available. Perhaps the biggest news: Twitter will share its revenues with the applications that show the ads. "We're still working out the exact value," Harris said today

Marketers take note: a new study from research firm Gartner has discovered that a majority of today's consumers rely to some extent on social networks to help guide them in purchase decisions. Despite this fact, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and others, while critical, are currently an underutilized aspect to the marketing process, the report says.

But not everyone using social networks is worth targeting equally, as it turns out. Instead, there are three types of online personalities that make up just one-fifth of the consumer population but are the key influencers in the purchasing activities of 74% of the population. Gartner calls them Salesmen, Connectors and Mavens.

Back in May, we mentioned that Boulder startup Trada - a crowdsourced solution for creating keyword-based pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns - had introduced support for Microsoft's Bing search engine. Today, Trada is getting a huge leg-up from Bing's competition as Google Ventures has invested over $4 million, leading the company's latest round of funding. Joining Google in the Series C round is Foundry Group, whose $1.5M investment mark's the Bouler firms third investment with Trada.

In an effort to encourage more business owners to take advantage of its Tags advertising program, Google Places is offering a 30-day trial to users who sign up by July 23.

The Tags program was one of a handful of features rolled out in April when Google revamped its Local Business Center and re-branded it as Google Places as part of a larger push to capture more local searches and advertising dollars.

Twitter launched its first sponsored promotion on @earlybird today, the official e-commerce account that ReadWriteWeb first reported on earlier this month. Followers of the account got a link retweeted for buy one get one free tickets to Disney's new movie Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The contrast between this launch and the launch of Twitter's other new advertising product, sponsored trending topics, is remarkable. It seems to send a clear message about @earlybird promotions: They are for weaker products that can't handle the open public conversation of trending topics. That's ok, it's a good idea in fact - but that's what seems to be happening.

Twitter has rolled out a number of new monetization models in recent weeks and a change to the search results page tonight may be the next one we'll see. Last Friday Peter Kafka published a report on AllThingsD predicting that Twitter would soon start offering followers to customers, for a price. Now tonight, MG Siegler at TechCrunch spotted a new feature that integrates people search directly into the basic search results page on the site.

Put those two reports together and what do you have? Big clues pointing to a future cost-per-action auction of people search listings for popular topics. Check out some of these example searches below and ask yourself: is this a bidding war waiting to happen?

Update: Twitter sent a pseudo-denial of this theory to TechCrunch!

Short-form social network Twitter has taken a bold new step in exploring its potential business model. The company appears to have begun promoting keywords in its "trending topics" list for sponsors.

When users click on a promoted trending topic, they are brought to a search results page, where the page is topped by a promoted Tweet. They aren't sent to an ad landing page, but to a live and uncensored conversation. That's what we're seeing with the new movie Toy Story 3 today at least. It's a logical and interesting way for the company to make money. It's also unlike almost any other advertising in history.

A report yesterday from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that online ad revenue is on the verge of surpassing print ads - an inspiring milestone for new media and convergence. However, the PwC survey was based on combined figures across all online media outlets; are individual news outlets having success detaching themselves from the traditional print ad revenue addiction? The Financial Times, London's version of the Wall Street Journal, says it has leveraged its niche market and will see print ad revenues dip below direct payments made to the paper this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A survey conducted by the blog Inside Facebook has uncovered some interesting statistics about advertisements on the popular social networking site and how users react to them. Surprisingly, according to the results of the survey, the majority of Facebook users either like or are neutral about the presence of ads on the site, as only 40.3% said they dislike the ads. What did these users say are the most disliked products advertised on the site? Online dating services.