Fresh from fending off suitor Microsoft Corp., online giant Yahoo Inc. is ready to introduce services and tackle campaigns with a new mobile-first strategy.

Mobile Marketer's Giselle Abramovich lobbed questions at Michael Bayle, senior director of global mobile monetization at Yahoo. Mr. Bayle comments on Yahoo's view on mobile advertising, its mobile-specific offerings, the company's work for Jaguar North America and mobile's future. Excerpts:

What types of mobile campaigns is Yahoo seeing?
We are seeing campaigns across a variety of ad types, including text advertising, sponsored search advertising, display and rich media. In many regards, these formats parallel the interests of our advertiser and agency partners who work with us on the desktop.

That said, as we have innovated for our mobile audience with products like Yahoo oneSearch, where we recently introduced voice input, allowing consumers to use the power of their voice to search for anything they want; Yahoo oneConnect, the first mobile product with an open architecture that aggregates communications tools; and Yahoo onePlace, a mobile content management solution.

We believe the mobile medium is awaiting a similarly innovative approach towards mobile advertising and we are working now earnestly towards executing that vision.

Which types of mobile campaigns are working best?
Across all the categories of advertisers working with Yahoo, those who have the clearest objectives are the ones achieving greatest success with the Yahoo network.

As we have been doing this for a couple of years in search and display and in over 20 countries, we are discovering that there is a real keen interest among advertisers in the automotive, travel and leisure, high-tech and finance categories.

Recently we've had several business-to-business advertisers participate in our programs and they are taking advantage of our behavioral targeting capabilities to reach small business owners, as one example of enabling successful advertising which reaches beyond the consumer or prosumer.

As with the PC landscape, the more we can execute against specific targeting criteria, the better we are performing for our advertisers. What's really pleasing to hear from advertisers is that, in certain markets, greater than 50 percent of the traffic to their Web page is coming via a mobile phone.

Can you talk about a particular mobile campaign you did for a big brand that truly sticks out in your mind?
A great example of a leading brand utilizing mobile as a medium to reach consumers is Jaguar.

Jaguar came to Yahoo in November 2007 for help in driving awareness of the new 2009 Jaguar XF. This was Jaguar's first-ever mobile campaign in the U.S. In conjunction with the 2009 Jaguar XF's reveal at the LA Auto Show, Jaguar wanted to drive qualified traffic to the XF mobile Web site to engage consumers in the XF experience and capture handraisers.

Again, this was to be Jaguar's first-ever mobile advertising campaign and it was successful on many levels.

One, Yahoo's reach was able to generate instant awareness. Two, Yahoo's targeting products allowed Jaguar to pinpoint in-market shoppers for luxury vehicles. Finally, Yahoo's audience on the Jaguar mobile site was highly engaged and took over 56,000 actions.

Actions they took on the mobile site: Looked at photos, videos, contacted dealer, et cetera. This generated 2,400 qualified leads.

Continuing on the success that began in November 2007, Jaguar North America teamed up with Yahoo as a key advertiser throughout the duration of the 2008 NCAA Men's Final Four Tournament.

In addition, because of Yahoo's work in helping to establishing global advertising guidelines with the Mobile Marketing Association, Jaguar was able to easily expand their Yahoo media buy to include additional networks beyond Yahoo.

We naturally wish to see the largest share of mobile media dollars flow to Yahoo and our collective network, including inventory on partners such as AT&T.

Where do you think mobile is going in the next few years?
The global mobile opportunity is tremendous.

It's projected that by 2010, there will be at least three times as many active mobile phones as PCs, providing a real possibility that mobile services and mobile advertising will ultimately be more important than their equivalents on the PC-based experience.

One of the challenges for the entire industry is helping users figure out what's possible on mobile.

At Yahoo, we feel the key is to develop innovative mobile-first experiences and provide consumers with simple, open, compelling and feature-rich applications that increase audience and engagement for mobile services.

By creating mobile Internet services like Yahoo Go, Yahoo oneSearch, Yahoo oneConnect and Yahoo onePlace we're reinventing the mobile experience for consumers, increasing value and thus creating new opportunities for advertisers.

What is Yahoo's role in mobile? Is mobile advertising a reality?
Yahoo is working to lead and enable the global mobile ecosystem. Mobile advertising is a reality. Brands and marketers are doing more than just testing the waters - they are thinking of mobile as an integral part of their overall campaigns.

You are seeing brand marketers engaging deeper with mobile and demanding advertising created specifically for the mobile consumer.

This is both the challenge and great opportunity for mobile: to develop advertising created specifically for the unique attributes of the mobile medium. A campaign that runs on TV or the PC can't just be ported to a mobile experience -- it has to be designed for mobile first.

We defined the market for display and search marketing in both PC and mobile, and applied some of those core learnings to the global mobile advertising guidelines recently updated by the MMA, for which we carry a board position in all currently established markets.

Going forward, you'll see Yahoo taking its advertising solutions and creating new forms of advertising to engage mobile consumers.

We see an incredibly bright future for this emerging market.

Advertising is a scale business. With our global sales force and reputation, we are focused on creating scale for advertisers, enabling them to tap into the rapidly-growing, lucrative audience of mobile consumers.

There will be many mobile monetization and service innovations from Yahoo over the course of 2008 and beyond, and the company will continue to lead and enable the global, mobile ecosystem.

Why is mobile getting all this attention all of a sudden?
It's where the consumers are spending time.

Advertising will always follow the consumer. It did so in the '90s with PC display, and earlier this decade with search, recently with video, and now, and perhaps with the highest growth rates on a global basis, in mobile.

In some countries where there is low-broadband penetration, we are hearing from advertisers that they are skipping the PC and moving straight to mobile.