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A growing number of marketers are using a burgeoning group of celebrities, bloggers and popular internet users to send ad messages to their personal followings on Twitter.

Services such as Ad.ly, Izea, and Peer2 are paying popular and well-known users to send short messages of advertising text via their social networking profiles on behalf of paying advertisers such as Microsoft, NBC, Charter Communications, and Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Amazon.com also announced this month that it will pay commissions to individuals who refer buyers to the site through Twitter messages.

These moves represent yet another step for advertisers in their shift into the social media and word-of-mouth space. Marketers believe that consumers are more likely to respond to messages sent by those they trust as opposed to ads provided in print, TV, and other online media.

As an example of such marketing, M&M’s paid John Chow - a Vancouver-based blogger and internet entrepreneur with 50,000 Twitter followers - $200 to share information on where his followers could buy M&M’s with customized faces, messages, and colors, (via the New York Times). Chow received approximately $3,000 in total ad revenue for similar tweets in October alone.

According to the Times, celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew, and the musician Erine Halter can earn up to $10,000 a month by sending a single message to their hundreds of thousands of followers.

Regular users with niche followings are also helping smaller marketers. For example, a bike enthusiast with 1,000 dedicated followers might receive compensation for tweeting about a new bike helmet.

Resistance to Commercialization

Such paid ads do have a few sticking points, however, including a general resistance among the online community toward the commercialization of personal profiles.

Transparency is also issue, but it is being addressed with new hashtags such as "#ad" and "#sponsor," which differentiates the ads from regular tweets.

Additionally, social networks such as Facebook have policies against the practice. But Peer2, for example, is getting around that Facebook restriction by offering users points instead of dollars, which are redeemable for Amazon.com items.

Haikus and 'Sephora Claus'

Brands including Microsoft and Sephora have launched Twitter holiday sweepstakes this month, as the social network gains popularity as an advertising platform, AdWeek reports.

This week, Microsoft promoted the launch of its new Windows Server 2008 R2 by asking users to tweet haiku poems about the line. In the first day, Microsoft’s contest received 300 entries.

Sephora is adding a Twitter component to an existing "Sephora Claus" promotion program. Users are encouraged to complete the sentence, “Dear @sephora, all I want for the holidays this year is ____,” with a drop-down menu of Sephora items. Sephora is giving away an award to one tweeter each day through Dec. 18, 2009.

Not Just CPGs

The perceived importance of Twitter users and their followings is not limited to consumer products companies. Recognizing the importance of the microblogging service as a news-dissemination medium is indeed catching among many business sectors, including non-profits and even the US government. As an example, NASA's move to give 100 Twitter users front-row seats at the Kennedy Space Center for the Nov. 16 liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis propelled the US space agency into the stratosphere of trending topics the day before the launch. The tweeters attracted more than 150,000 followers, making the event the third-most-popular topic for the day.

Twitter, for its part, also appears to be getting serious about ways to help advertisers reach their target audiences. In a move that finally appears to be an attempt by the company to monetize its user base, the company will start selling corporate accounts to brands by the end 2009.