Let me pull back the curtain and admit that sometimes I get more interviews under my belt than I have print space for. As a result, I sometimes wind up talking to very interesting companies and then having to wait a good while to write about them.

Last July I spoke with Neil Perry, acting CEO of XLNTAds, a start-up that brings together companies that want online ad content and video makers looking for a creative challenge. The company was founded in early 2007, just as the trend in user-generated ads was beginning to build momentum thanks to mass-media exposure such as the Super Bowl Doritos TV spot.

“Ads that are produced by amateurs, if you will, seem to resonate a lot more with consumers than the very slick Madison-Avenue commercials that proliferate on the networks right now.” Perry said at the time. “There’s something to be said for seeing a Toyota Tundra up on top of a mountain peak, but consumers respond best when Joe Blow from next door recommends a Toro mower rather than a Honda mower. It’s that testimonial approach coming from someone you can relate to.”

At that time, XLNTAds was just getting ready to launch its Web site, an Internet location where aspiring commercial-makers of a wide range of skill could come to find out what brands were looking for their services. The thought was that brands could launch consumer-generated ad (CGA) contests on the site, let XLNTAds run the contests and host the applicants, and choose their favorites from among the submissions.

“We take the load off the brand,” Perry said last July. “We know these creators and have relationships with them; we monitor the ads before they get posted to make sure the brand will be comfortable with everything that goes up; and we run the visitor contests to help determine the best of the submissions. Then we go to the brands and hand them the top ten submissions, any of which is ready to air on television right away. And by the way, they’ve spent about a third of the $350,000 they would have paid for a Madison Avenue commercial that people don’t think is relevant anymore.”

Back then, XLNT was still building its stable of cinematographers and testing their mettle with ad challenges for made-up brands like XLNT Cola, a XLNT candy bar named ChocoBana—and for the firm itself.

Time passed, summer turned to fall, fall turned to winter. When I next heard from Perry it was to announce that XLNT had signed some notable consumer brands to run CGA contests over its platform: Nestle (for its $100,000 Grand candy bar), Slim-Fast, net 10 pre-paid cell phone service.

The contests all share some elements. There’s a “resume” XLNTAds site explaining what the brand is looking for—a theme, a tagline, a specified length (usually 30 seconds to a minute)—and often creative assts such as a logo. There’s also a small but not-inconsiderable payment to the finalists (usually $2,500 to $5,000) with the chance to earn four to five times if the brand opts to use a creator’s content as a TV spot.

Perry said that while XLNT was talking to large national brands looking to tap the authenticity and native talent of the nonprofessional video world. But he added that the firm’s model also held interest for smaller brands, the kind that didn’t normally have a large budget to drop on broadcast TV spots.

That might describe Vertical Branding, the marketer of such as-seen-on-TV stars as the Hercules Hook, the Extreme Beam flashlight and other household items. Perry hooked me up with Cynthia Levin, online marketing manager for Vertical Brands. When we spoke, they were running a CGA contest with XLNTAds to find four TV-quality ads for Zorbeez, the multi-purpose cloth whose absorbency can apparently turn a small pond into a mini-Sahara.

Zorbeez multi-purpose cloth

Zorbeez have been advertised on cable stations around the country in infomercials from bearded TV pitchman Billy Mays, but Levin says Vertical branding was interested in some good out-of-the-box creativity. “There are smart people outside our four walls who have a different vision that can benefit our company,” she said. “We’re always interested t find out what our consumers are thinking, and that’s why we wanted to run a CGA contest.”

Vertical chose to work with XLNT rather than to host a contest on its Zorbeez Web site because XLNT has the connections to some of the best content creators, those who turn up regularly on YouTube, Revver, MySpace, Metacafe and the other user video sites. “They’ve built this platform that is just incredible, so partnering with them allowed us to operate this contest at a whole different level than doing it ourselves,” Levin said.

Ad creators could access Zorbeez product information, photos and video through the XLNT platform, and the first 100 applicants were also given a free product sample. Their brief, according to the resume, was to apply a creative twist to the product without losing the strong call to action in the Billy Mays ads. “No pussyfooting, please,” the instructions read. “We want consumers to see your ad and then go online and buy. It’s that simple—and that challenging.”

Levin said Vertical specifically didn’t offer much direction for the ads beyond that. “We really were interested in seeing all kinds of styles,” she said. “If we got a number of ads that were completely different to what we’re now creating, that would mean we need to take a fresh lo0k at how we’re presenting our own message.”

The Zorbeez contest is now closed, having received 83 entries. The Slim-Fast and Nestle $100,000 Bar competitions are closed too. So far, no winners have been announced. A March 4 post from Perry on the XLNTAds blog asked creators who had submitted to these contests to be patient. “All three marketers are actively engaged in re-looking at their original plan and are considering bigger and better ways of utilizing your fine work,” he wrote.

What those bigger and better ways might be is still open to imagination at press time. But there might be a clue in the assignment that was thrown out to XLNTAds’ creative community yesterday: a CGA for the upcoming New Line Cinema movie, “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”. New Line will choose what it thinks are the top 10 videos from among the submissions received by April 13. (The film has its U.S. release April 25.)

But in a new twist, creators will also get paid for producing the most viral ads. Those top 10 choices by New Line will also earn $10 for every site that posts the creative by April 14, up to $350 a person. And the ad that gets the greatest number of views by that time (according to XLNT’s count) will receive $2,500, with $1,500 for the second biggest view total and $1,000 for the third.

It should be interesting to see whether XLNT can in fact go beyond tapping amateurs’ enthusiasm for a product and get them to start inspiring that kind of passion in others.