"The marketing community for many years has built its business model on control," says Steve Rubel, a vice president at New York public-relations firm CooperKatz who also writes a blog called micropersuasion.com. "[But] it's very hard to control the message these days."

"There is a clash between the emerging networked culture and the industrial mass culture that we've lived with for the past several decades," says David Bollier, author of a new book, "Brand Name Bullies," and cofounder of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that represents the public's stake in copyright, technology, and Internet issues.

Mr. Bollier sees a changing social context for ads, one that offers a greater role for consumers "rather than one-way blasts of marketing muscle."
--Christian Science Monitor

Also,
Consumer-Created Video Ads Boost Converse Sales (AdAge, free reg. required)