Toyota is using rich media banner ads on Yahoo Fantasy Football iPad, iPhone and Android apps to drive brand engagement.

The cross-platform campaign includes animated banner ads that can be expanded to access a Yahoo content feed to help with their Fantasy Football picks for the week. The creative is updated regularly to include new picks and draw users back to the ad experience.

?Yahoo is a leader in Fantasy Football and Toyota has been a partner of ours on the PC,? said Brian Morel, mobile director at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA.

?As a significant amount of traffic now originates from mobile and tablets - last season we reported 40 percent of our audience access our mobile Fantasy Football properties- it makes sense to extend the partnership to these platforms,? he said.

?When the objective is keeping your brand top-of-mind, it?s imperative to be where your audience is.  Increasingly the brands? audience is on mobile.?

Dynamic messaging
The ability to effectively engage users across mobile platforms with rich ads is instrumental to the success of a branding campaign.

However, running cross-platform campaigns can be challenging for brands because of differences between operating systems.

Toyota worked with agency Saatchi & Saatchi as well as Medialets to develop the ?Pickups of the Week? campaign and deliver it across mobile, tablets and PC.

The ads initiate as an animated banner that offers users help with their picks for Fantasy Football. The user can tap to expand the banner and access a Yahoo! content feed that provides details on players for that week, and allows them to scroll through previous weeks.

A link in the ads takes users to the Toyota site.

?Toyota?s Pickups-of-the-Week ad unit features dynamic messaging that speaks directly to the user and that changes according to the day of the week,? Mr.Morel said.

?This is an integrated/contextual ad experience that is additive to the user?s Fantasy Football experience by providing information that helps Fantasy Football game play,? he said.

Yahoo?s Mobile Fantasy Football, which runs for three months, sees a high number of page views, per Mr. Morel. For this reason, dynamic messaging is important.

?We observed that it is important to create an ad experience that is not only contextual, but that changes through time,? Mr. Morel said. ?That way the ad stays relevant and provides a reason for users to engage throughout the season.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York