The United States Air Force has turned to mobile advertising within CBS Interactive?s mobile version of MaxPreps.com to recruit young adults.

The Air Force is running banner ads on the MaxPreps.com mobile site. The mobile banner ads click through to the Air Force WAP site. The banners are part of the Air Force's Echo Zulu campaign.

?MaxPreps is one of CBS?s fastest growing Web properties,? said Andy Beal, president of MaxPreps.com, Cameron Park, CA. ?Our audience skews heavily toward teens and young adults, and they consume a lot of media via the mobile device, so this is a great opportunity to extend the MaxPreps brand to other platforms.

?The Air Force is targeting our core demographic on both the wired and mobile Web,? he said. ?Echo Zulu is the Air Force?s means of tagging their mobile ad campaign.?

Accessible through any browser-enabled handset at http://www.maxpreps.com, the site currently includes schedules, scores, rosters, standings, rankings and stats for each of the 16,225 high school football teams across the U.S., as well as detailed information for many other sports across the U.S. high school landscape.

In 2010, the Air Force Recruiting Service is hiring more than 31,000 new airmen and women. An emphasis is on recruiting people with no prior military service into one of about 140 enlisted career opportunities.

Some of the features of the Air Force?s campaign include allowing thousands of high school coaches to nominate their players of the week. Winning players? headshot, bio and stats appear on MaxPreps.com.

The local Player of the Week award feeds into a national Player of the Week program featured on MaxPreps.com that is also sponsored by the Air Force.

Air Force banner ads featuring the Echo Zulu slogan are featured throughout MaxPreps.com's mobile site. When consumers click on a bannner, they are redirected to the Air Force's mobile Web site.

The Echo Zulu portal within the Air Force?s mobile site says, ?Echo Zulu, a.k.a. EZ. That?s how airmen make seemingly impossible jobs look, every day. Easy. Airmen around the globe accomplish feats that go far beyond what?s expected. Missions that deserve more than a pat on the back.?

The MaxPreps.com mobile site will serve as a digital game program, putting content in the hands of the high school community while they watch their favorite team in action.

?We?re tactically positioning this a s a 21st-century game program,? Mr. Beal said. ?If you go to a high school game, they don?t have a game program, or if they do it?s not up to date or only features the home team.

?We?re able to provide fans with all of the details they would normally find in a printed game program,? he said.

MaxPreps.com is an online high-school-sports destination, offering the latest news, analysis, rankings and streaming content.

MaxPreps.com aspires to cover every high school team, game and player by partnering with nearly 30,000 varsity coaches throughout the country. The mobile site features more than 2 million high school athletes.

The site's target demographic is the high school community, the fans who are attending high school events including parents, boosters and the high school student body. 

During high school football season, more than 70 million people attend games, as many as attend all MLB games, according to MaxPreps.

?With this platform for mobile devices creating a service that can be accessed from the bleachers, it?s cool way to engage fans and drive new users for MaxPreps,? Mr. Beal said.

Unique visitors to MaxPreps.com in Sept. 2009 totaled 1.8 million, a 77 percent rise from Sept. 2008.

Every traffic metric MaxPreps.com tracks has shown similar growth, including visits (3.9 million in Sept. 2009, 63 percent year-on-year growth) and total minutes (17.4 million in Sept. 2009, 30 percent year-on-year growth), according to comScore Media Metrix.

CBS is getting the word out about the MaxPreps mobile site through its network of 30,0000-plus high school coaches, banners and PA announcements at high school games, promotion via its 60-plus Coach Association partnerships and promotion on wired Web version of MaxPreps.com, as well as promotion on other CBS Interactive wired and mobile Web sites.

?The consumption of content on mobile devices has traditionally been very high among high-school students, who are often early-adopters,? Mr. Beal said. ?We want to give them the opportunity to consume our content in more places and more often.

?Mobile is core to our growth strategy moving forward,? he said.