I believe the future of advertising and social media will continue to merge and morph together into a new form of interaction. The more I look around I’m noticing truly small businesses are embracing Social media, mainly facebook but not exclusively, and are using them to interact with their customers but they still don’t quite understand the power behind it.
Once they grasp the “branding is interaction” aspect and stop looking at their advertising, branding and social media as separate entities then the entire medium will evolve.
Once the average “mom n pop” businesses can skillfully wield the social power, then the millions of tiny brands will force ahead this evolution.
Truly an interesting subject/time.

As a side note, you should Disqus comments here. I’m assuming yours is a WordPress blog, it’s a WP plugin .No ulterior motive on my end, I just it enhances the convo on blogs somewhat.