Last night 33-year-old Sohaib Athar started tweeting strange goings-on in the Pakstani town of Abbottabad completely unaware he was recording an historic event. The computer programmer, who tweets as @ReallyVirtual, was unwittingly live blogging the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Things like that don't take long to spread nowadays, something reflected in the huge hike in Athar's Twitter followers.

Image source: Webtrends 

Disclaimer: I'm a friend of the entrepreneur in question and help her out with PR.

Launching ads during prime time TV shows and encouraging reaction on social media seems to be the new way of advertising. Yeo Valley did it during X Factor with their rap music video which has since attracted more than 1.5 million views on YouTube as well as lots of attention on Twitter and Facebook.

Yell has tonight done something similar with the launch of its new ad during ITV1's Dancing On Ice.

The directory company has reworked the classic J.R. Hartley series from the 1980s. Rather than an elderly gentleman attempting to find a copy of Fly Fishing and turning to the Yellow Pages, the 21st century version features a DJ trying to track down his record which he finally secures with the help of an iPhone app.

 
Like Yeo Valley, the clip is attracting lots of Twitter attention and it's mostly positive. TV advertising still has a part to play in modern marketing but it's good to see that the large corporates are recognising that social media means the modern viewer can react instantly and share their feedback publicly. The clever marketers are those who embrace that feedback and integrate it into their campaigns.