Bacardi?s new Torched Cherry flavored rum is the launch sponsor of the Thrillist local-lifestyle application for Apple?s iPhone in 15 markets.

A supplement to Thrillist's free daily email and Web site at http://www.Thrillist.com, the iPhone application narrows down the dizzying scope of each user?s city with Thrillist's handpicked eating, drinking and shopping recommendations. Users can search, sort and share articles from Thrillist's database of local content, all organized by the nearest, newest and most popular places.

?Our core demographic is men in their 20s and early 30s?young, urban, affluent men actively engaged in the culture of their city,? said Chris Steib, director of product development at Thrillist, New York. ?We cover bars, restaurants, clothing shops and services in a lot of our cities.

?Bacardi is the launch sponsor, and we?re pumped to have them on the app,? he said. ?We?re really excited with how we?ve integrated the ads into the app, because we?ve seen a lot of attempts at integrating advertising into lower thirds of apps, and personally we don?t find them to be an experience that is valuable.

?We give Bacardi good real estate without it being disruptive to the user experience?while the page is loading, instead of a blank screen they see a two-second interstitial featuring Torched Cherry flavored rum that is really compelling.?

Thrillist is a men?s lifestyle brand reaching more than 2 million daily email subscriptions, in addition to millions of unique Web and mobile readers.

Mobile advertising is a thrill
When users log-in to the application they see the Bacardi interstitial ad promoting the brand?s mobile WAP site.

Users can click through via an in-application browser to view the Bacardi Flavors mobile site, which has five main sections of navigation.

?As you navigate from section to section, we show you interstitial ad driving to the App Store where Bacardi is promoting its own iPhone app, Bacardi Flavors,? Mr. Steib said.

Thrillist?s application features weekly video clips, share tools for Facebook, Twitter and email, Foursquare check-in and mini-games, all in the style and irreverent tone Thrillist's 2 million-plus readers are used to.

Logged-in Thrillist users can also save articles to ?My Thrillist,? their personal favorites archive, which is automatically synced with the reader's "My" archive on Thrillist.com. 

Thrillist for iPhone is available for free to iPhone and iPod touch users with OS 3.0.

The application includes coverage of Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, with additional markets launching in the fall.

?For our first mobile platform, an iPhone app makes a lot of sense for us, because we have a really sophisticated audience when it comes to their mobile Web browsing habits, and lots of Apple users,? Mr. Steib said. ?A lot of people come to our Web site on their iPhone, so we knew this was a good place for us to start when going mobile.

?The iPhone works for us, and we?re in development on other apps and a mobile Web site as well,? he said. ?We?ve leveled off the taxonomy to eat, drink and shop?what?s closest to me, what newest, what?s most popular and what I?ve saved as favorites.

?We have almost 2 million subscriptions to our emails, and we sent out an email to all of our subscribers to let them know about the app.?