The new Twitter links, however, are a whole new story. If an Amazon Associates member takes the time to re-write the text into their own words, there's virtually no way to know by looking at the post that the Twitter update is actually an ad.

Is Amazon Spamming Twitter?

In the past, several legitimate companies have diluted the Twitter stream with promotions and contests encouraging Twitter users to "tweet to win" so to speak, by pasting in some sort of marketing message into the "What are you doing?" box or by appending a promotional hashtag to their everyday messages. But unlike these company-run Twitter promotions, there's not a hashtag to use or any specific wording that has to be tweeted in order to participate in the Amazon Affiliate program. All anyone has to do is tweet links along with the message of their choosing.

Because Amazon's marketplace is extensive in terms of the products it sells, there's a wide variety of things which can be promoted. No matter what a Twitterer's particular interest is: music, politics, technology, etc., there's bound to be hundreds of things that could be mentioned in their Twitter stream without the posts appearing to be an ad. In fact, there's a good possibility that they would have been talking about these products anyway throughout the course of the day...they just couldn't have made any money off of them until now.

Hidden Advertisements

The problem with this sort of "hidden" advertising, though, is exactly that: it's hidden. This is the internet's version of "product placement" - subtle advertising in plain sight yet never clearly identified as such. Was your favorite TV star using a Macbook? Was he drinking a Coke? Already commonplace in Hollywood, these almost subliminal advertising messages permeate our consciousness every time we turn on the TV. Now that same sort of hidden ad will soon show up in the Twitter streams of your favorite tweeters.

Soon they'll start promoting a great book they just read, a DVD they liked, or one of a million other things pulled out of Amazon's vast inventory. None of it will sound out of place given the types of informal conversations that take place on Twitter every day. You won't even know that they're advertising to you until you click through on the link and find yourself on an Amazon.com webpage - and even then, you may not be sure. Was that a referral or were they genuinely just linking to the Amazon website to be helpful?

Will the FTC Step In?

Another question this raises, at least here in the U.S., is whether or not the FTC will get involved. Having recently taken steps to make sure that bloggers were properly disclosing freebies or payments received by companies whose products were being reviewed on their sites, one has to wonder if they'll now be tempted to monitor the undisclosed advertising that's about to explode on Twitter.

Amazon could have avoided the potential threat of government involvement (not to mention the accusations that they're "spamming Twitter") by generating their links using their own proprietary URL-shortening system, something like amzn.com or amz.com for example. That would clearly identify the tweets' purpose. But instead, they opted to make their links with the URL shortener bit.ly, the one that Twitter itself uses by default. This makes the Amazon links indistinguishable at a glance from any other shortened link posted to Twitter. There's no way to tell if a tweet is an ad unless the Twitter user left Amazon's auto-generated text in place. Of course, no one is going to use that text except the laziest of Twitter spammers - people you're probably already avoiding.

Tell Amazon What You Think with #AMZNSOT

Today, many Twitter users are coming out against this new type of Twitter-fueled advertising, registering their complaints via tweets marked with the #AMZNSOT hashtag, the official tag used to give Amazon feedback about the system. These users are already branding this new effort "spam," saying things like: "Amazon now gives you cash for spamming on Twitter? Oh, swell," as Twitter user TwitBin says. "Does this just mean more Twitter spam as people try to make money?" asks NickHerbert. But there are just as many Twitter users saying nice things about the new system too, calling it "cool," "awesome," "sweet," and even claiming it "rocks."

You can give Amazon your two cents as well by updating Twitter with your thoughts and including the #AMZNSOT hashtag along with your message.

Whether you think the new Amazon Twitter integration is good or bad, there's no doubt that it will be a major game changer for Twitter. As it blurs the lines between conversation and ads, people seem to think that Amazon has either created something of genius or has ruined Twitter as we know it. Few seem to be undecided when it comes to their feelings about this issue. The question is now: which side will end up being in the majority?

From an article on AdAge, which reported on Brand in Hand's news in detail, the reason that the women were not engaging with the mobile advertisements came down to how they actually used their phones. The research showed that women, "especially so-called super-moms, are task-oriented and tend to use their smartphones to help them get things done."

In other words, these busy iPhone users didn't have time to goof off by clicking (or rather, tapping) through on a mobile ad. Ads were seen only as distractions that would take them away from the particular task at hand.

For advertisers trying to market to this particular demographic, the new findings will have an impact on what type of mobile campaigns will be run in the future. And given that only 18% of women age 18-49 have a smartphone today, according to Nielsen, smartphone advertisements just won't deliver the numbers that advertisers need. At least for now.

A Better Alternative to Mobile Ads?

Although the AdAge article didn't go into any detail about how marketers could engage smartphone-owning women in different ways, we think that there's at least one company that may have figured it out. Instead of offering distracting mobile banner ads that get in the way of the task that needs to be done, food and beverage giant Kraft introduced their own iPhone app instead.

This branded effort, dubbed "iFood Assistant" (iTunes link), is a recipe app that helps users plan meals. This fits in perfectly with how Brand in Hand claim women use their smartphones - they launch apps designed for a particular purpose. Yet this time, while doing so, the women (and men, too, we suppose) are also engaging with the brand itself because the recipes featured in the iFood Assistant app include Kraft food products of course.

This app is so successful that Kraft is even able to successfully charge for it, something that rarely works for branded apps. But Kraft's app sells - and sells well - priced at 99 cents in the iTunes App Store. They even hit their 3-year download goal in a matter of weeks, said Ed Kaczmarek, Kraft Foods director of innovation. 

While at the moment, Kraft's iPhone application appears to be the exception and not the rule when it comes to creative marketing efforts, it's a great example of how mobile marketing could and perhaps should be done, especially if you want to engage busy, task-oriented women.

According to the study, which looked at 150,000 tweets, 11.1% of the brand-related tweets were information-providing while 18.1% were information-seeking. The latter of these two is especially useful to companies looking to understand what questions and concerns customers have about their products. However, the large majority of the tweets - 48.5% - were simply comments made in passing which mentioned the brand but whose primary focus was something else.

The remaining 22.3% of tweets were sentiment-related, meaning tweets in which a user was expressing an opinion about a brand, either negative or positive. What was surprising about this subset was that users were more likely to express positive tweets than they were to complain.

Why So Cheery, Twitter?

This seems odd, actually, given that the Internet has typically been a place for disgruntled consumers to rant and rave more so than it's been a place to praise what works. You can see this type of negative sentiment expressed everywhere from online forums to whiny blog posts about how such-and-such company "did me wrong!" In fact, the desire to express a negative opinion even seems to dominate feedback systems like blog comments, for example. Rarely does a writer receive comments like "great post" or "I totally agree" - rather, more comments resemble "you're wrong and here's why" or "how could you not mention X?"

That's why it's strange to hear that on Twitter, it's positive sentiment that reigns. What makes this platform different from the rest of the Internet as a whole? Are Twitter users simply happier people? Or has the data been skewed by marketing campaigns where Twitter users are encouraged to tweet nice things about the company in order to win a prize?

Perhaps it's because Twitter simply makes it easier to express yourself, allowing for a better balance between negative and positive sentiments. Typically, sharing your opinion on the web meant exerting a good deal of effort. Writing a blog post, recording a video, or leaving a blog comment are things that take time. For the most part, busy, information-overloaded web surfers aren't going to take that time unless something really gets them fired up. Twitter, on the other hand, is so quick and easy to use, you can post a missive of joy in only seconds. And the 140-character limit allows you a no-pressure way of doing so.

Through short videos from some of the top industry minds including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lauder Professor at The Wharton School Jerry Wind and AAAA CEO Nancy Hill, the group hopes to challenge marketers to take risks and create better campaigns. For now, the site comes up short as the videos appear to answer questions in a very general manner with few specifics in terms of tactics and strategy. The most promising component of the site appears to be the "Free Tools" section with a list of resources including links to a website optimizer, search insights and 3rd party trends data from Facebook and Twitter. Nevertheless, as of this review, all of those links are dead. The first rule of marketing: test your product.

While this is a good site to get inspiration, social media marketers and PR pros who are looking for new strategies and specifics might be better off visiting Building43, PR 2.0 or asking questions through LinkedIn's online groups. Other great resources include the Social Media Club events and social marketing-related Meetups.

How to Build Your App

Since the service is designed for businesses, one of the first steps is to select your particular industry from the provided categories. At the moment, these include: Restaurant, Retail Store, Business, Non-Profit, Government, Education, Entertainment, and Customization, a category which lets you design your own personalized app if what you're creating doesn't fit into one of the other categories.

From within each of these sections, there are various buttons to choose from. For example, in the "Restaurant" category, you can add buttons like "menu," "reservations," "map," etc. There are even buttons for Facebook and Twitter which allow you to direct customers to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Sample layouts are provided, too. After picking your buttons, you create your Sweb Apps account and submit the information about your business. The fifth step is to customize the application with your business's personalized info. In the case of the restaurant app, for example, that would mean filling out the menu, listing your hours and address, and so on.

The final step is to submit payment. Prices vary depending on which package you choose. Packages with 4 buttons are $200, 6 buttons are $300, and 8 buttons are $400. In addition, Sweb Apps charges a $50 one-time setup fee and a $25/month hosting fee. For an extra $10/month, business owners can optionally choose to add on a simple analytics package called "App Tracker" which lets you track the number of downloads and button clicks. By tracking this sort of information, it's easy to tell which buttons are accessed most and which are being ignored, allowing you to re-design the app to better engage your customers.

Customizations

While the process of app building is extremely simple, and yes, we were able to create a basic app in a matter of minutes (we stopped short of paying for it of course!), the end result is a somewhat basic-looking application. But there are a couple of things you can do to spruce it up a little. For one, you're able to select your own background color, and this can even be a custom color of your choosing. Sweb Apps also lets you upload your own button images instead of using the defaults provided. This would definitely give your app a more unique and personalized look, so it's worth looking into. If you're not all that handy with Photoshop yourself, it would be a good idea to hire a designer or crowdsource the project through a site like 99Designs or CrowdSpring and have someone create custom buttons for you.

The Best Part: Real-Time Updates!

If anything ever changes and needs to be updated, you simply return to your Sweb Apps account and make the changes there. Instead of waiting on Apple to approve the update as is done with traditional iPhone applications, the updates to Sweb Apps go live in real-time thanks to the company's hosted Content Management System. With Sweb Apps, all the app's content is housed in the company's own database which is why it's able to be updated on-the-fly (and why there's a monthly hosting fee). The possibilities here are endless. This feature allows a business to promote one-time events, specials, coupons, sales, or anything else that would be offered on a limited time basis. This, in fact, may be the best feature of the app builder. Real-time communication with your customer base through the mobile is exactly what applications should provide, but when relying on Apple and their mysterious approval process, the delays involved often prevent this from happening.

Sweb Apps could function as a way for businesses to distribute mobile coupons, too. With buttons like "Photo Gallery" which can be renamed to anything you like (such as "Coupons" or "Specials"), businesses could update their apps with pre-designed mobile coupons, if they so wished.

Lots of Potential, Future Plans

Not that long ago, we wondered why there weren't more iPhone applications for businesses available in the App Store. It's possible that was because the tools to make building mobile apps easy were simply not good enough. With Sweb Apps, though, this could quickly change. Being able to build a mobile application with no technical know-how using a dead-simple onscreen guide is the sort of mobile service we're sure many businesses have been dreaming about. (At least we hope so! We would love to track the sales at a few of our favorite local stores via our iPhones.)

The company plans to introduce more features into their service in the future including premium buttons, Flash-based content (assuming Apple ever approves Flash on the iPhone), in-app advertising opportunities, and more. Next year, the company also plans to launch app builders for other mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre.

The company has shown a number of user-generated successes including CNN.com's iReport, Netflix's Instant Viewing Player and TED's Encyclopedia of Life and Pangea Day film festival.

However, just as agencies are shifting from print and broadcast campaigns to digital advertising, is it possible that amateur dynamos are preparing to hijack the industry? Last week ReadWriteWeb covered Digg's new ad program - a program where advertisements can be voted up or voted down by the community. As advertising shifts to this new mixed-content model, where are companies more likely to see success - with content from world-class advertisers or trusted community members? As always, especially with the current market, agencies will have to work tirelessly to justify their retainers.

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.

We've been fascinated by augmented reality for some time now, especially after we got wind of a new mobile application built for Google's Android platform called Layar. The app, an augmented reality browser, "layers" sets of data on top of your mobile phone's viewfinder as you point the camera at the city around you.

Once our interest was piqued, we began imagining what future apps could be built using this platform, thinking up everything from people search to place data.

Only days later, another mobile AR app made the news: TwittARound, an app which shows you nearby tweets. Designed for the newest iPhone hardware - the iPhone 3GS - it taps into the phone's GPS and compass to determine your physical location. It then floats the avatars of nearby Twitter users across the screen. You can click these icons to see those users' tweets.

Then there is AugmentedID, a facial recognition technology using algorithms, from Polar Rose, a startup that delivers photo-tagging tools for Flickr. With this application, you can hold your phone up to a person's face and see their online profile, contact info, social networking links, and any other information they've chosen to share.

At the moment, though, mobile applications such as these are being primarily designed for Google's Android platform, as its open nature allows developers to access the phone's hardware and the video feed. However, we're on the verge of seeing an explosion of AR apps thanks to the soon-to-launch update for the iPhone OS. The next version, due in September, is widely expected to provide an official means of accessing the necessary controls to make AR apps possible through a new Application Programming Interface (API). Already, apps like acrossair's "Nearest Tube," a train finder for the London underground, are poised to go live as soon as Apple is ready.

AR Discovered by Marketers. Let the Hype Begin!

Don't look now, but marketers have discovered augmented reality and have started to incorporate it into their advertising campaigns. This can only mean one thing: we're about to be inundated with pitches and products touting AR products...not to mention AR ads.

Perhaps we should have clued in to this coming deluge when we saw how Mattel was pitching their next-gen action figures for the comic book-inspired "Avatar" movie. (Hold the included 3D tag up to a webcam and the toys come to life on your computer screen!)

Now we're seeing big box electronics retailer Best Buy incorporate augmented reality into their printed ads. Their recent augmented Sunday circular featured a 3D image of a Toshiba notebook computer. (Hold the ad up to a webcam and the laptop comes to life!)

Only days later, we're getting emails from Kia Motors -- yes, the car manufacturer -- about the company's new "augmented reality Facebook application." Using the computer's webcam, the players of Kia's "Go Hamster Go!" game control the action using their facial expressions. (Is that really augmented reality, though, or is it just neat?)

There's also news about a company called Metaio, creators of a mobile AR platform that lets people leave and view notes and 3D animations in places using their phones. And since Metaio is known for working on marketing campaigns like the AR Lego packaging, there's little doubt that they could soon start including ads on the new platform.

Time to Dial Down the Hype?

We think marketers need to carefully consider whether AR will truly benefit their clients before blindly hopping on the AR bandwagon. Case in point: Best Buy said their AR ads exceeded expectations, with more than double the number of users than they had planned trying them out. But that number was only 6500 out of a Sunday ad circulation of 43 million. Out of those 6500, 12% actually clicked through to other Best Buy websites, a number the company touts as "fairly decent." Although the company plans to do more AR campaigns in future, they're also of a size to be able to engage their customers in a variety of ways on a number of platforms. Smaller companies may not have the luxury to do the same.

And we are not the only ones thinking that AR is about to hit its full hype potential. Gartner shows that in their latest report, "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2009," AR is steadily climbing towards the "Peak of Inflated Expectations."

The problem with over-hyping this technology prior to it really taking off is that it could become diluted and meaningless before we even have a chance to explore the potentially world-changing applications it could help create. (And no, we don't mean these AR exotic dancers.) But don't get us wrong: for a while (possibly a long while), we're going to be completely enamored of each and every AR-infused application that passes us by. However, there will come a time when AR, like every over-hyped buzzword that came before it, will be overused, its meaning skewed and stretched to encompass anything vaguely interactive, whether it's truly AR or not.

Let us instead heed the words of Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence Enterprises and Chairman of the AR Consortium, which he shared in a recent interview with Tish Shute:

"Don't be misguided by the gimmicky marketing applications now. Look ahead, and pay attention to what the visionaries are talking about right now... AR has long-term implications for smart cities, green tech, education, entertainment, and global industry. This is serious business, but it has to be done right."

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."

Essentially this looks like an expansion of the pre-existing Audio AdWords. While Google closed down its broadcast radio ad program in February, the company continues to work with advertisers on online streaming audio and radio sites. Basically Google already has a slew of pre-produced audio ads sitting in its ad serving engine. Depending on the fit of the advertiser, it may be a no-brainer for companies to throw Google Voice into their mix of marketing efforts.

If this project takes shape, the really interesting part will come a month later when advertisers are billed. With streaming audio ads, companies get a relative amount of assurance that the audience is listening to the entire ad, including the call-to-action. While audience members can always mute advertising or pull out their headphones, a site's main audio content often will not play without the obligatory intro advertisement.

Telephone ads are different. Three days after going on a date, haven't you ever been a little too eager to pick up the phone? You know nobody's advertising to cutie pie. Meanwhile, on other days it's tough to even find the phone. Many callers would have to listen to at least two 30 second advertisements before hitting the voicemail box. After the first month of the program it would be extremely interesting to see how many partial ads will be served, the cost difference between a first place and second placement ad, and even how the company deals with multiple-language advertising.

Thanks to Staska for the tip!

Ironically, if anyone's to blame for spamming our Twitter timelines, it's the marketers themselves. They've managed to trick our friends into spamming us with their messages instead.

We're not sure where anyone, marketer or not, gets off telling Twitter that it's their responsibility to filter the content that flows through their service mainly because Twitter is already doing so. The company itself currently addresses the spam issue by providing an @spam account where you can report spammers and other abusers in the Twittersphere. If the account in question is indeed a spammer, Twitter boots them from the service. That sounds good to us. Simple and effective...at least for the end user. (It's probably a nightmare to deal with at Twitter HQ).

Of course, Twitter doesn't want their service overrun by spammers - no one would. However, they're probably more concerned with wasting their resources to support these fake accounts than they are with the annoyance it causes for their users. But do they have it under control? Perhaps not - fighting spam is sort of like fighting computer viruses. You block one and someone makes a new one. The same goes for spammers - kill one spammer and another appears to take his place. It's an ongoing fight, not a plague that can be wiped out overnight through some magic filter.

Besides, what you consider spam, I may consider "valuable information about a product." Probably not, but there is a gray area there that has to be taken into consideration. Some spam is out-and-out spam, but other stuff may just be "hot deals" from a legitimate company. However, if you didn't want to see said hot deals, you might consider them spam. Still, how would you see them unless you actually followed that account to begin with? Or maybe you turned on auto-follow using a service like SocialToo? If that's the case, it's a little ridiculous for you to get annoyed when half your timeline turns into a slew of "buy this" messages - you only have yourself to blame for that.

Where Actual Spam Hurts Us

The only place that honest-to-goodness spam can really affect you on an everyday basis is not in your own personal timeline of friends' tweets, but when viewing a trending topic's stream or when doing a keyword search. In these cases, spammers hijacking a currently popular hashtag may show up in the timeline, potentially diluting the results with irrelevant information. For this reason alone, we support Twitter's spam-fighting efforts.

Even More Dangerous? "Tweet to Win"

What's actually more concerning than spam, however, is the new trend we'll call "tweet to win." Legitimate companies have begun using Twitter to promote a message - essentially an advertisement about their business' offerings. To cajole twitizens into "spamming" their followers in this way, they're offering prizes or the chance to win prizes in return. (Full disclosure: this author did this once and still regrets it).

This situation hasn't gotten out of hand just yet, but it seems like it's only a matter of time before it does. Because really, how many of you could resist yourselves if all of a sudden a company started giving away free Macbook Pros? Oh, apparently not too many of you because you've already spammed up trending topics today with #moonfruit. What's Moonfruit? Why, it's a company that's giving away a free Macbook Pro every day for 10 days. Is this a brilliant social media promotion (as Adam Ostrow of Mashable claims) or just a new, inventive way to junk up the twitterstream with advertisements? We think it's closer to the latter.

The only consolation in this particular case is that Moonfruit doesn't care what your tweet says, so it can just be appended to any ordinary tweet. That's not usually the case - most companies provide a message for you to re-tweet.

What's frightening about this "it's not spam, it's a message from your friend" is that it's really not. My friend isn't actually telling me that Moonfruit is this great new company they have just heard about and that I really have to check out. This isn't a word-of-mouth recommendation - my friend just wants to win a new laptop. They know this, I know this, and the company knows this. And that makes the message just as spammy to me as any other in-stream tweet from an actual spammer.

So, what can be done? Well sure, I could unfollow that so-called friend, but why would I? It's not like they do this regularly and 99% of the time, I like what they have to say. But while one day that friend is tweeting to win a Macbook, another may be tweeting to win something else. Even if only a small percentage of an ever-shifting group of my friends tweeted a promotional message every day, it would be enough to junk up my timeline.

Sadly, that's one kind of spam that Twitter can't really block. And neither can I.

The M.insight application sorts the feeds into four main categories: social media, public relations, marketing and branding, and advertising. It also includes two "in-house" categories which feature feeds from the MWW Group themselves ("MWW/DialogueMedia" and "D.insight").

M.insight functions like an RSS reader, but one that you don't have to set up on your own, meticulously adding feeds one-by-one. Instead, this blog reader is already configured and ready to go. You can, though, add and delete feeds within a category if you so desire.

The app is available on three mobile platforms: the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. On all three platforms, the app does full feed caching (including images) so you can read your feeds even when offline - a feature more useful on the WiFi-only iPod than the others. On the Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, M.insight lets you email articles from within the app or post them to Twitter or Delicious. You can also access other news and info like weather, stocks, sports, flights, etc. 

Although targeted toward the PR/Marketing niche, we think many of you would also enjoy this application, especially the "social media" category which features feeds from top blogs like ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Chris Brogan, Web Strategist, CenterNetworks and Scobleizer.

To try M.insight for yourself, you can download it from the iTunes App Store by clicking here or for Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, click here.

Searches for "home depot" registered one of the most stunning declines in paid clicks, as only 0.83% of searches went to a paid listing in the last four weeks, compared to just over 39% a year ago.

Recession? Or are Companies Getting Smarter About Search?

In part, this decline can be explained by the current economic climate, which has led many companies to reduce their search marketing spend. In its latest quarterly earnings report, Google noted that paid clicks across all of its AdSense partners only increased by 3% in the last quarter of 2008, though the search giant didn't release any detailed statistics about paid search traffic.

However, as Andy Beal points out, this reduction in spending on search could also mean that some of the large brands like Orbitz or Home Depot have simply figured out that, given that they are already the #1 search term for their respective brands, there is really no need to spend a lot on paid advertising.

As we reported earlier this month, some retailers have been shifting their budgets away from search-engine marketing and towards email and social marketing. At the same time, though, small number of companies are also looking at the current downturn as a chance to break into new markets, by expanding their spend on search marketing while their competitors are cutting back their spend in these areas.

From CRM via Twitter to Facebook live video contests, the folks at Threadless have knocked online engagement out of the park and created a community around a brand while building a great reputation for responsiveness. Watch on and be schooled.

Catch a whiff of the Threadless social aroma on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

The Dockers ad was built using the Medialets platform, a platform that combines real-time analytics and rich media functionality that leverages the iPhone SDK, allowing ads to tap into the phone's GPS, accelerometer, microphone, and other features. It even allows the ads to work when the phone goes offline, too, thanks to pre-caching technology that delivers the ad to the phone in the background so that it's available anytime, signal or no signal.

And while Dockers may have been the first shakable ad, it's not the only one being built using this new technology. Some other examples of ad actions built using the Medialets platform include:

• A soda company creates an interactive bottle of soda that is motion-sensitive. (The user shakes up the bottle and it splashes all over the screen.)
• A car rental company can determine that a user is outside their typical geography and serve a CPA ad for a discounted rate.
• An electronics company showcases a new rebate enticing users to scan a barcode at a nearby store.
• A cruise line offers deals for users in Baltimore and Ft. Lauderdale due to proximity to their ships.

And that's just the beginning. Just around the corner we'll see even bigger and bolder uses of this technology. Think: interactive film trailers tapping into the iPhone accelerometer, YouTube videos playing within the ad unit without leaving the app, ads that target users by geography or even time of day.

This sort of technology is set to revolutionize the nature of advertising. It's innovative and unique... and it's not something that's ever been possible before. (Try shaking your TV set - it's hard!)

The Benefits of the New Mobile Ads

For advertisers, they know they're also getting a more engaged user. Unlike print ads, where there's no tracking available, or TV ads where users often fast forward or leave the room during commercials, a well-placed mobile ad often has a user's undivided attention. Mobile users aren't usually doing anything else when playing with the apps - the device has their complete attention.

And a "well-placed" ad isn't referring to the physical location of the ad on the screen... it basically means the best time to show the ad within an application... a time which, for the record, is not during a pre-roll. People hate pre-rolls, especially when they're itching to start using an app. But give those same users a fun and unique ad in between levels of their game and they're usually happy to watch, shake, or whatever else the advertisers can come up with.

Because the ads can tap into iPhone features like the GPS while still having the power of analytics on the back-end, these new ads are quite different from the TV ads targeted towards a more general public audience. Instead of just hyping the latest movie with a trailer, they could show the trailer and let you check the show times at your local theater. Instead of just talking about the latest sale at a retail outlet, they could give you a mobile coupon to use when there. They could even pinpoint you as a poor college student looking to save money on your next pizza purchase or as a young, married professional looking for new restaurants to try for your Saturday night out. They know you, but in a non-creepy and actually sort of useful way.

No other advertising can apply that level of targeting and personalization... except perhaps online ads. But consumers have become nearly blind to the banners and AdSense sidebars on today's websites... and then, of course, there's the problem of your not being able to shake them.

12seconds.tv, a video messaging service that lets users record quick videos only 12 seconds in length, has been popular among Twitter users since its launch in summer of 2008. With the service, you can send out a tweet to your Twitter friends once you've posted a video on the site. That's precisely the functionality which appealed to marketers looking for an entry point into Twitter. The only question was how do you get 12seconds users to tweet out videos about the brand?

The solution that 12seconds.tv is introducing today is called the "12omercial." And yes, like it sounds, it's a Twitter commercial made using the 12seconds service. Here's how it's going to work: brands and companies will sponsor 12seconds users to create 12omercials on their behalf. The videos created by the users will be a response to a question asked by the brand. Once recorded, the 12omercials are automatically posted to the Twitter streams of the users involved. Those tweets will include a link back to their video.

The first brand to participate is LG who will begin using the platform to promote their new phone, the Versa. The question they're asking is "what's your Versa vice?" Or, in other words, what's that thing you do with your mobile phone that you know you shouldn't? Is it text-messaging while driving? Checking Facebook while in a meeting? The answers to this question will be varied and perhaps even humorous (or so the company hopes, that is).

Play Along, Win Fabulous Prizes

You may wonder what incentive 12seconds users have for creating these user-generated commercials for these companies. Fortunately, they won't be paid to do this. We say fortunately because once cold, hard cash becomes involved, too many people looking to earn a quick buck would end up creating these "12omericials" and then would clutter up our Twitter streams with their spam. 

However, users will be encouraged to participate - they just won't earn actual money by doing so. Instead, the creation of a video will equate to a sweepstakes entry where they have the chance to win some sort of prize, as determined by the brand. What the prize will be will change with each promotion, but with LG, it's a trip to Las Vegas.

Another reason users may participate is because there's also the possibility of having their video seen by a far larger audience than just their Twitter friends. It's up to the brand how the content will be used, but there are a number of possibilities. Some companies will be selecting the best videos for use on their own web sites, others may use them in online ads, and there's even a chance that videos could find their way to a TV commercial. (In LG's case, there will be a dedicated mini-site set up for the promotion.)

But What If People Say Bad Things?

As we recently saw with the Skittles social media campaign, when people realized they could get their tweets on the Skittles homepage just by using a particular keyword in their posts, they started to abuse the system. Some people posted really (and we mean really) offensive messages to Twitter just to see those messages on Skittles.com...and perhaps to prove to Skittles that their campaign was a terrible idea.

But 12seconds co-founder, Sol Lipman, doesn't think the Skittles campaign was a bad idea at all. He thinks it was an ingenious experiment and perhaps even representative of the future of advertising. According to Lipman, we're moving past the point when brands want to communicate with customers through press releases and banner ads. It's user-generated content that is the future. And what better way to learn about a brand than through a trusted friend's tweet?

Of course, when you put the power of brand advertising in the hands of the people, bad things can happen. That was certainly true in the case of Skittles, but even so, Lipman argues that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, some people got out of hand, but at the end of the day, people were talking about Skittles. Just because some people did terrible things, it probably didn't mean you started hating the candy or boycotting it. Instead, you just had it a bit closer to the forefront of your mind the next time your sweet tooth kicked in.

Be Brave, Companies - Engage! (It's Your Only Hope)

This radical repositioning about what it means to advertise may actually be a bit too scary for some companies and some will be hesitant to get involved. User-generated content has been known to backfire before. For example, in 2006, Chevy let YouTube users make commercials for the 2007 Tahoe, but what they got were videos about how bad the truck was for the environment. Still, that's not stopping other companies from attempting nearly the same thing. Case in point: Ford. This month, the company will launch their "Fiesta Experiment," a marketing effort that puts promoting the new car into the hands of 100 twenty-somethings who will blog, record video, and post to social media about the their experiences.

In a similar vein, the 12seconds.tv Twitter commercials will offer brands an opportunity to start conversations while abandoning their control over the exact messaging. They may have to take the good with the bad. But in the end, only genuine conversations will convince the jaded, over-saturated customers of today...and especially those known as "Generation Y." As we noted before, that generation especially tends to rely on a network of friends for product recommendations, not traditional advertising.

Check It Out

In addition to being used for branded campaigns, these 12omercials can be created for any promotional purpose. Users can include a URL in the video that links to anything they want - their blog, something they're selling, a charity event, or whatever. A back-end analytics package will help them track the campaign, too.

As far as the sponsored promotions go, each will run for a week. This may change as more brands get on board. LG is up first, followed by Xobni, the social inbox plugin.

1. You're in a high-ticket business:  The article recommends that businesses with only a few customers who each spend tens of millions of dollars with the company each year are better off not using social media. Instead, face-to-face interactions and phone calls will still work better.
2. You fight with your employees: In some businesses, management and employees are constantly at odds. (An example was given of a unionized workforce where management-labor strife was common). This is also not the type of company that should encourage employees to communicate directly with customers via social media.
3. Management skepticism: If management doesn't believe in social media, then employees who have been told for years that public communication needs to be filtered will be hesitant to try out a new medium which requires them to speak openly. In this scenario, management needs to encourage and reward participation to make social media work. If they don't, it will fail.
4. Strategic Vacuum: Don't do social media just to do social media. If a company doesn't know what they're trying to accomplish, then there will be nothing to measure and no way to determine success. Just as with any other initiative a company takes on, there needs to be an objective...and that objective shouldn't be to distribute a press release.
5. Privacy and regulatory concerns: If you work for a company where what you say in public could send you to jail, proceed with caution. You'll probably even need lawyers involved (sigh).

But Don't Be Afraid to Try!

All that being said, outside of a handful of scenarios, there is still plenty of room for growth when it comes to social media. For example, the results of a recent survey put out by marketing intelligence specialist WebTrends found that only 2% of businesses are using Twitter as a marketing tool. Only 2% - can you believe that?

Perhaps the problem is that businesses are hesitant to dip their toes into the water because they're unsure of how to proceed. Social media community members, such as those on Twitter, can be very critical of the companies they think are "doing it wrong." The backlash can be brutal...and not necessarily good for your brand, either. In other words, businesses thinking of getting involved with this platform should definitely think before they leap.

As it turns out, that was the exact advice Sarah Milstein gave at last week's Web 2.0 Expo out in San Francisco. At her session, "Effective Twitter," she recommended that companies consider the following questions before diving in:

• What will be different in 3, 6, 12 months as a result of our Twitter account?
• Who are we hoping to connect with?
• What kind of information is interesting to them?
• What might go wrong? What expectations might people have of us?

(Her session also had a number of other good resources - you may want to check out the PDF summary here.)

During Milstein's presentation, audience members were furiously scribbling down her every word as if this was the first time they had ever heard this information! Of course, it probably was. Although the right and wrong ways to use Twitter and the tools that can help you use it better may be old hat to some of us who live and breathe this stuff, but it's clear that to many people out there, this information is incredibly new...and intimidating.

This is unchartered territory for a lot of companies and many of them are just now beginning to think about their strategies and levels of involvement. You could literally see this trend in action at the Expo. There, some of the top sessions, the ones so jam-packed that it was standing room only, were specifically about social media and marketing. Twitter, Facebook, community building, etc...people just couldn't get enough.

This makes us wonder if 2009 be the year that social media really goes mainstream? Or, will the experimentations continue? We think it's possible that it will be both. Companies will try new things using social media. Some will succeed and some will fail, but in the end it will be these experimentations, led by the big brands, that will help push social media further out into the limelight than it is now.

Of course, having more Hollywood celebs sign up for Twitter couldn't hurt either.