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There is just no way to escape advertisements these days. We all know that Apple is implementing the new iOS 4’s iAds feature (expect to see more of this once the whole antenna debacle has toned down a notch), but aside from the more obvious advertising features, there is one other factor that tends to influence consumer’s decisions: social networking.

We all know how effective word of mouth advertising can be. While the average person does not need to listen to the recommendations of his or her friends, a few words from a choice individual among peers who a person truly admires or respects is more than enough of an endorsement to give a purchase a reason.

Now imagine that scenario on with the element of social networking on your mobile phone. Receiving a quick message or Tweet from close friends saying how nice it is to visit a certain establishment or to purchase a certain product will be a very strong influential factor for many people.

This is not just a one sided influence either. As effective as social networking can be, it is the accessibility that smart phone technology (as well as WiFi and 3G network access) gives that makes this a very potent element for marketing. And of course, the social network gives the messages more potency than standard mass forwarded content on mobile phones. After all, receiving spam messages on a mobile phone is never good, but reading about updates directly from friends is considered enjoyable.

Research firm Gartner has been gathering data on how people’s social networking habits tend to influence and affect their purchasing decisions. This influence is a crucial factor that has to be considered by marketers if they want to successfully advertise a product in this day and age. The study covered about 4000 consumers across various territories in the world during the last quarter of 2009.

The Apple iPhone’s new 4.0 OS update is coming soon and it brings plenty of new features.

Sadly, “new” does not necessarily translate into “good” as Apple mixes in iAds to the host of new functions that users get to try out. While versions 4.0 does not change anything drastic, it does bring users access to multitasking, background images, icon folders and several new extras.  It is big news when Apple finally provides users with a basic function that they have been deprived of.

In general, the update brings many nice things for people, but it also brings a feature that is quite questionable: iAds.

Simply put, this new function will be running in the device’s background and delivering new ads to users while they browse the web, run apps, listen to music and more. How it exactly works still remains to be seen, but expect it to keep track of user preferences and usage patterns in order to bring relevant ads as well as choking bandwidth and transfer speeds when it decides that you need a fresh new batch of advertisements to ignore.

This is why it is not surprising that iAds is simply Aids spelled differently.

Aside from bringing a new function that would most probably earn the ire of users, Apple has also cast a stormy cloud over the horizon for developers –according to the agreement on the 4.0 SDK, developers are not allowed to use Flash to create content. Considering that many iPhone games were developed using a Flash compiler, this would certainly alienate developers who use Adobe software.

It is common knowledge that Steve Jobs hates Adobe, and everyone already tolerates the lack of Flash support on the device; but this one goes a little too far.

Read more about the new features about the Apple iPhone 4.0 OS at Tech Radar.