The company is running mobile ads within Pandora’s iPhone application. Paramount has been using mobile advertising in the past years to promote its movies.

“Driving traffic to Fandango for a purchase is a great way to create instant ROI from a mobile ad, which is the key to helping brands raise the awareness of a mobile budget,” said Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis, Atlanta.

Ms. Troutman is not affiliated with Paramount. She commented based on her expertise on the subject.

Paramount did not respond to press inquiries.

Movie tickets
The expandable Paramount ad features the film’s star Eddie Murphy and users are encouraged to tap on the ad to visit the movie’s site.

When users tap on the mobile ad they are redirected to a mobile landing page where they can view a trailer for the film, as well as share it with friends and family through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Users can also browse stills from the film through the Gallery feature and view the plot of the movie through the Story feature.

Additionally, Paramount is letting consumers buy tickets to see A Thousand Words.

Users are redirected to Fandango’s mobile site where they can browse showtimes and find the nearest theater that is playing the film.

Consumers can buy tickets for the film via the mobile ad

Mobile game
Paramount has been ramping up its mobile efforts over the past years.

In December 2010, the company used mobile rich-media advertising as part of the multichannel campaign to promote its “Shrek Forever After” film, which resulted in a 6.2 percent click-through rate.

The Shrek Forever After campaign targeted iPhone users on the Yahoo mobile homepage and the Yahoo Movies mobile portal (see story).

Last year, Paramount used expandable rich-media mobile advertising to get the word out about Jackass 3D worldwide.

The movie studio partnered with Millennial Media, which developed the campaign. Millennial was able to deploy it in 10 countries and four continents, localizing the content appropriately (see story).

“With Paramount using their ad for a specific movie, and then directing traffic to that movie selection within Fandango for instant purchase with theatres that are accepting online ticket sales is a good move – this would be especially effective if there was a movie that was premiering and a sellout date was posted to drive the ticket sales quickly,” Ms. Troutman said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York