McDonald's has launched its first mobile marketing campaign that specifically targets the Hispanic demographic while on the go.

Customers who visit a McDonald's restaurant on Mondays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. can get a free seven-ounce Iced McCafé Mocha or an eight-ounce Hot McCafé Mocha. The campaign runs through Aug. 21.

"McDonald's wanted to foster a relationship with potential and current consumers via mobile," said Marcus Startzel, senior vice president of sales at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD. "In order to connect with these consumers, they leveraged Millennial Media's mobile reach, knowing that we could scale the reach to aggregate an audience for McDonald's to promote their new McCafé Mocha product in an engaging manner."

McDonald's is using Millennial Media's ad network to engage the mobile Hispanic community in New York City in a language-targeted mobile ad campaign.

Based on the strategy set by McDonald's agency, d expósito & Partners, Millennial is running banner ads directing the target audience to a campaign landing page to collect opt-ins for four SMS alerts reminders about the free McCafé Mochas and two local events.

Consumers that opt-in will be alerted to locations offering free McCafé Mocha samplings.

Millennial Media's network technology allows it to target based on brand goals. In this case, the company used different targeting methodology, such as demographics and geolocation, to help drive results based on campaign goals.

Millennial Media is managing all elements for the delivery of the campaign.

This isn't the first time McDonald's has turned to the mobile channel for a promotion.

The launch of the McDonald's Corp.'s M Burger in France stood out for its innovative use of mobile advertising. The fast food franchise ran banner ads on the Microsoft Advertising Mobile Media network. The brand used animated banner formats instead of traditional mobile banners (see story).

McDonald's Corp. launched a new integrated Web-to-mobile campaign to promote its McRib sandwich.

The campaign ran on Myxer's new Bullseye targeted advertising service. The service let McDonald's target Myxer's audience by criteria such as geography, gender, age, music genre and mobile preferences (see story).

"We continue to see great activity in the mobile retail promotions," Mr. Startzel said. "Advertisers who want to reach their consumers while they are out living their lives utilize mobile to drive action.

"In this case, McDonald's wanted to steer consumers into a local New York City store to sample a product," he said. "McDonald's likely also knows that consumer behavior around food and beverage consumption, in this case, coffee, is somewhat engrained in our daily routines.

"Enticing consumers in an uncluttered ad market to try a new product and even want to change behavior to drive people to try a new product and into a McDonalds via mobile engagement is extremely strategic."