Twitter last night ran its first television ad during the the 2012 Pocono 400 NASCAR race and it used it to promote a new style of hashtag page.

The spot, which is was one of seven created by Twitter all focusing on NASCAR, featured the Twitter.com/#NASCAR url that led Twitter users to NASCAR page.

The 16-second ad features NASCAR racer Brad Keselowski in his car and taking a picture with his iPhone and directly uploading it to Twitter.

Keselowski, @keselowski on Twitter, made a splash on Twitter earlier this year when he tweeted from his car pictures and updates following an explosion and fire during a NASCAR race in February. His updates gained him more than 100,000 followers in two hours.

As significant as the TV ad itself was the way that Twitter used it plug the NASCAR hashtag was more more interesting still.

It sees Twitter take ownership of the hashtag and begin to build pages around them. This is the start of something quite major for Twitter and brands. It suggest a new way that Twitter can generate revenue around specially created and curated pages.

While they are similar to ordinary hashtag pages Twitter is curating these new pages and adding branding and images — as you can see here:

This is likely to be the first of a number of such pages built around sporting, celebrity and news events.

You could also see Twitter easily creating these pages for advertisers looking to build momentum around an event.

And the great thing for brands or sports looking to have such pages created is that they don’t have to do any work.  The content, other than the pics at the top, all come from fans.

The fans do all the work for the brands and Twitter does the curation.

You can see all SEVEN Twitter ads here – they all focus on NASCAR including this helmet cam spot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5rF1VvvUHg&feature=player_embedded