Yahoo Inc. and Publicis Groupe's newly launched VivaKi Nerve Center have formed a partnership to integrate their respective mobile advertising platforms.

"Publishers can write once, run everywhere," says Michael Bayle, senior director of global mobile advertising for Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. "Blueprint takes advantage of native, phone-specific features."

For example, an automotive brand can provide a map to help a consumer with a GPS-enabled phone to get to the closest dealership.

"Publicis is a very strong media-oriented company with a core competency of mobile, and they don't want to be bothered to ensure that brands are rendered effectively in different regions globally," Mr. Bayle said.

"By using Yahoo's Blueprint, Publicis can focus on creative elements to launch new mobile Web sites and maximize consumer engagement in mobile widgets," he said.

Publicis has been busy lately, having partnered with Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and -- as of yesterday -- AOL's Platform-A to form an open-source Audience on Demand network, known as the VivaKi Nerve Center.

Publicis' VivaKi Nerve Center will integrate with Platform-A, connecting audiences across AOL's media properties and the Web sites participating in the Advertising.com network. The partnership will enable the Publicis, on behalf of its advertising clients, to plan and buy audience targeting across Platform-A and other advertising networks with a single campaign.

"If you're a media buyer, now you'll have an interface to look across AOL's inventory and the Web sites participating in the Ad.com network and look for specific audiences -- people who are interested in sports, women, et cetera," he said.

Many major brands have advertised with Platform-A, including McDonald's, Chevrolet and GMC.

Yahoo's Mobile Development Platform is available at http://mobile.yahoo.com/developers.

"This is a centralized resource for Publicis' individual agencies to be able to work effectively in mobile and Internet emerging technologies," Mr. Bayle said. "It's an opportunity to reduce friction and get brands onto mobile quickly."

The two companies will also integrate Publicis' current media buying systems with Yahoo's Right Media Exchange, a community of advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks and, when it is introduced, AMP! from Yahoo, the company's advertising management platform.

The goal of the partnership is to help client brands tailor their messaging to reach target customers on mobile devices, speed up the time it takes to get those messages to market and provide development resources at lower costs.

Yahoo will apply its Smart Ads model, which has been successful in the PC landscape, to mobile. Yahoo will create variations of a given brand's ad message. Publicis Groupe will tap into this system to develop related "hyper-personalized" microsites. The ads can then be instantly adapted based on consumer information such as where the user is based.

"As you see a particular offer, it tailors the ad to your location," Mr. Bayle said. "It then updates the information at the time the ad call happens to make a very relevant message for the consumer."

Rather than have the consumer click to access a generic site, Publicis will be able to create personalized micro ads using Yahoo's Blueprint format.

"We want to tailor our message to the unique profiles of these subscribers, whatever their personality may be, and it requires automation to be successful," Mr. Bayle said. "Based on demographics, we can make numerous permutations of graphical ads such as banners.

"While these may have smaller footprint in terms of real estate, we still can put out a dynamic message that rendered automatically through the engine," he said.

Ad agency conglomerates such as Britain's WPP Group PLC and France's Havas can give the demographics they are seeking and specify a particular message for each group. Rather than having to anticipate and pre-identify their audience manually, it's all done automatically.

"Mobile advertising has to be relevant and personal so that it's not intrusive, and this will be our proof point for accomplishing that goal," Mr. Bayle said. "We're taking a ecosystem approach. We'll include all brands, all agencies."