• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 11, 2012

Angling for a more mainstream crowd -- and the brands that love them -- Twitter debuted its first TV spot during the Pocono 400 Nascar race, this weekend. “You always know when a tech company is becoming modern and sophisticated in its marketing … It starts doing TV ads,” CNet half-jokes.

“The [hashtag-heavy] ad features driver Brad Keselowski … using his phone to share his point of view with the world,” The Next Web reports. “With hashtags becoming increasingly prevalent on TV, it’s a smart move by Twitter to ensure it is able to provide a user friendly branded experience that can benefit both the user and the brand.”

Running all weekend, the ads promoted one URL, http://twitter.com/#nascar, which immediately redirected users to http://twitter.com/hashtag/nascar. “Plenty of TV ads advertise hashtags,” Business Insider notes. “But hashtags in TV ads normally stand alone. They don't form part of a Web address.”

“Some are already speculating (no doubt astutely) that this is Twitter's attempt at exciting marketing folks about Twitter's marvelous commercial opportunities,” CNet adds.

“The hope, apparently, is that advertisers can be convinced to pay for Twitter-hosted pages that automatically aggregate relevant content on a particular subject,” writes AllThingsD.

The “brand-new hashtag page … could open a new and very welcome revenue stream for the micro-blogging platform,” Media Bistro’s All Twitter blog suggests.

“The idea is that you'll keep Twitter open and monitor it throughout [Nascar races] to get more than what the announcers, TV cameras, or media reports can give you,” The Verge writes. “It's nothing new to experienced users, but the new focus is designed to make the service appeal to those who've never understood Twitter.”

“It’s safe to assume that there will be more partnerships like this in the future,” according to TechCrunch. “NASCAR won’t be the last sports league or big brand to take advantage of a Twitter hashtag page. Based on the success of this weekend’s experiment, we expect more brands to jump on board.”