The company is running a mobile banner ad within Pandora’s iPhone app. The banner ad features the company’s large spicy Italian limited time only pizza for $10.

“They’re leveraging the value and capability of banners and then they’re using that to trigger a direct response and make an opportunity to have consumers respond and buy some pizza,” Neil Strother, practice director of mobile marketing strategies and mobile services at ABI Research, Kirkland, WA.

Pizza anyone?
When consumers click on the Papa John’s pizza ad they are redirected to the company’s mobile site.

There they can choose whether they want to have an order delivered to their house or if they want to pick it up.

Additionally, consumers can find the nearest location and browse current offers.

Before placing an order, consumers have to enter their address to find the closest location.

After, they can order the limited time special pizza or other offerings such as other pizza pies, wings, cheese bread and soda.

When consumers are ready to checkout, they just enter their credit card information or sign into their Papa John’s account.

Consumers can choose from delivery or carryout

Consumers can put in their address information to place an order

Mobile past
This is not the company’s first foray into mobile.

In 2009, Papa John’s launched a mobile Web ordering system that lets pizza lovers set up an account and place orders directly from their mobile devices.

The site is accessible at http://mobile.papajohns.com, or users can follow the online link to the mobile site from the Papa John’s Web site at http://www.papajohns.com (see story).

In addition, later that year, Papa John’s and Starbucks advertised on GeoVector Corp.’s World Surfer application on the iPhone and Android platforms.

The application let users point their phones in a particular direction to search for restaurants, retail outlets and other locations (see story).

“It’s an intelligent use of targeting because it’s time sensitive, it’s targeted to the right user – if they leveraged the profile data that Pandora has – and it has made it very efficient to complete the cycle,” Mr. Strother said. “They want to drive sales to their stores or drive delivery of their pizza.”