How effective is a banner ad on a mobile game WAP site? Curious, Yahoo oneSearch turned to Greystripe, a firm which places ads in mobile games, for a campaign to test precisely that.

The ad campaign's primary goal was to drive traffic and increase top-of-mind awareness of Yahoo Inc.'s oneSearch mobile search portal. Here's what resulted: a click-through rate of 4.2 percent and 610,900 impressions served.

A secondary objective for Greystripe, San Francisco, was to run a mobile WAP survey to determine the effectiveness of the ad campaign, specifically focused on the brand lift and awareness for Yahoo oneSearch.

"Greystripe administered the mobile-based WAP survey to U.S. users after they had played a free mobile game they had downloaded from GameJump's WAP site," said Jenny Burrington, director of ad sales for Greystripe. "The research was conducted using control and exposed groups of respondents.

"The exposed group viewed the Yahoo advertisement, played the free mobile game and then was asked to take the 10-question WAP survey," she said. "The control group did not see the Yahoo oneSearch advertisement, but were still asked to take the 10-question WAP survey after playing the free mobile game."

Greystripe's AdWrap suite of products offers mobile content free to consumers in an ad-supported model.

The campaign ran May 19-July 13. Greystripe targeted U.S. consumers who had downloaded a game from GameJump's WAP site. The goal was to specifically look at users in the domestic market and benchmark real advertising metrics on brand impact and ad recall for a well-known brand like Yahoo.

Yahoo oneSearch ads were recalled significantly more often in the exposed group of respondents with a lift of 43 percent and a relative jump of 127 percent from the control group.

"This was Greystripe's first mobile downloadable WAP research study, so we wanted to measure the baseline brand lift and ad recall of Greystripe's full-screen mobile ads," Ms. Burrington said.

"Therefore the Yahoo oneSearch ad that was flighted during the research study did not have an ad action associated with it, meaning users could not click to the Yahoo oneSearch portal," she said.

The survey data analysis was performed by Grail Research.

Since the study for Sunnyvale, CA-based Yahoo, Greystripe has performed similar research studies on New Line Cinema's Golden Compass movie and for Diet Coke Plus for ad agency MediaVest.

Greystripe also found a higher inclination to try Yahoo oneSearch among the exposed respondents, with 18 percent higher mentions of "Definitely will try,"compared to the control respondents.

Among those who recalled seeing the Yahoo oneSearch ad, the keywords "search" and "results" were recalled significantly more among the exposed respondents in comparison to the control respondents. The word "search" was recalled 22 percent more and the word "results" was recalled 11 percent more than the control group of respondents.

"We used mobile for this type of campaign as opposed to the more traditional marketing mediums because the mobile phone is an extremely engaging and personal device," Ms. Burrington said.

"By advertising on the mobile phone, brands can reach consumers in an uncluttered environment leading to highly effective advertising campaigns," she said.