One of the tactics Twitter has adopted to increase its ad revenue is to put sponsored tweets among the normal tweets in people’s Twitter feeds. The tactic has backfired to a great extent, as users mock the marketers’ messages.

Like most social media advertisers, those who use Twitter have found that the practice is similar to herding cats. Often the attempt to promote products and services only makes them look worse, at least to those people who read both the promoted tweets and peoples’ negative responses.

A few recent examples highlight how great the risk can be.

@AmericanExpress has launched a campaign called Project Passion. The tagline of the ad is “What makes you get out of bed every day?” The answers range from “needing to pee” to “making a living.” These are not the expressions of passion that American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) expected.

Pressing on to another example, @Target has a campaign titled “Sometimes summer means doing absolutely nothing and being totally okay with that.” Among the responses: “Stop sending me your stupid junk mail” and “I hope the minimum wage gets raised and China puts you out of business.” That sort of reaction makes the Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) investment useless, or perhaps even negative to the company.

And, finally one from Jaguar USA: “@KellyRowland tells us why she loves the #FTYPE.”

Among the answers Jaguar did not want: “Because she was paid by Jaguar to like it? How stupid do you think we ARE?” The sad fact for Jaguar is that this is true, at least for one person who saw the message and decided to trash it.

@JaguarUSA, @AmericanExpress, @Target #insultads #hatemarketers are all awaiting your insults and unpleasant observations.

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