But that system, introduced by Twitter back in June 2009, is going away.

The messaging service hasn’t taken down the icons it assigned to certain famous users, which were supposed to tell users they “can trust that a legitimate source is authoring their Tweets.” But in most cases, it is not assigning new badges.

Twitter actually shut down verification at the end of August, but almost no one seems to have noticed. Aside from this ClickZ story,  the only other mention I can find of the change is this vague note on Twitter’s help site, which says the company is going to replace the old system with a new one “that will be better for users.”

One reason Twitter and the famous people who use it have been able to soldier on: Verified accounts haven’t been completely closed–if you’re really, really important, the service may be able to help you out.

“We continue to very selectively verify accounts most at risk for impersonation on a one-off and highly irregular basis,” Twitter PR exec Carolyn Penner writes.

One recent worthy: Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller, who showed up on the service early, way back in 2008, but didn’t start actively using it until this month, when he earned the “verified” badge.

[Image credit: Annie Mole]

Quite surprising: The battered real estate industry will spend more money on ads in general this year.

Wait a minute: Aren’t ad dollars supposed to move from every other venue to the Web? And aren’t battered industries the ones that are supposed to move the fastest, since they’re the ones most in need of the Web’s efficiency?

Not in this case, says research firm Borrell Associates, which predicts that the real estate industry’s spending on Web ads will drop four percent in 2010, while its overall marketing spend will increase by two percent. ClickZ:

Colby Atwood, president of Borrell, said that real estate advertisers–typically among the more savvy of display clients–are moving away from Internet advertising in favor of more cost-effective channels, like promotions and direct marketing, and are not expected to come back in any significant way.

“Advertisers across the board are beginning to flatten out the amount of money that they put into advertising per se, and they are increasing their investment in promotions,” he said. “Once companies learn about how to contact an individual, if they’re savvy, and many of them are becoming this way, they remarket directly to that individual using e-mails and other directed forms of promotions.”

I haven’t seen the full report (I’ve asked Borrell for a copy), but I’m assuming that Borrell’s projections distinguish between different kinds of Web advertising.

For instance, I’d be very surprised if spending on search engines like Google (GOOG), which ought to be as cost-effective as any direct marketing campaign, is shrinking; I can definitely see general display ads withering though. I’ll update if I get more.

[Image credit: infrogmation]

The search giant will reportedly open up its AdX service, which is supposed to bring together ad buyers and sellers the same way a stock market does, within the next two weeks. ClickZ says the exchange is supposed to open in conjunction with next week’s AdWeek festivities in New York.

That timeline sounds right to me. Google (GOOG) has already been inviting selected clients to try out the system, which is based on the one DoubleClick ran before Google acquired the firm last year. Google told potential buyers via email that it will begin integrating their ads into the exchange this week.

None of this will have any impact on Google’s search users, but it’s potentially important for online advertisers and publishers.

Until now, the online exchange market has been dominated by Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media, but Google will become an instant rival as soon as it opens its doors. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s (MSFT) offering, AdECN, seems stuck in the starting gate.

Google’s exchange will open shortly after the departure of its manager, Michael Rubenstein, who is now president of ad tech start-up AppNexus.

That’s because the Online Publishers Association, one of the Web ad industry’s main trade groups, is rolling out a new series of in-your-face ad units–standardized blocks of space that Web publishers and advertisers favor because they make it easy to mass-produce marketing messages.

The new standards are meant to combat “banner blindess”–our collective, unconscious and successful efforts to block out and ignore most Web advertising.

ClickZ has the details, but the key point is that the ads are going to be ginormous and gaudy–think monster trucks with sirens and flashing lights. The numbers they’re referring to in the quotation below are pixels; by way of comparison, the column of text you’re reading now is about 350 pixels wide:

“Among the new units being debuted are: the ‘fixed panel,’ a 336 x 860 panel that looks embedded into the page and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as the user scrolls; the ‘XXL Box,’ which is 468 x 648 and allows users to actually turn ‘pages’ and watch video; and the ‘pushdown,’ which is 970 x 428 which opens to display a nearly full-page ad and then rolls up to the top of the page.”

The reasonable thing to point out here is that there’s nothing that prohibits advertisers and publishers from doing interesting and creative stuff with these formats–just like Apple (AAPL). And if you’re really lucky, you’ll find that the ads are even about stuff you’re interested in learning about. That’s the key, remember, to Google’s (GOOG) success (and note how unobtrusive most of Google’s ads are).

But if the ads aren’t interesting and aren’t relevant to you? It’s the kind of thing that could drive a mild-mannered person to install ad-blocking software.

If you want to see this stuff live, keep your eyes peeled at sites run by ESPN, the New York Times, MTV and Condé Nast Digital, which are among the 24 publishers that have agreed to start running at least one of the ad units by July.