Carmaker Porsche used mobile as part of a bigger, multichannel campaign to promote its luxury vehicles as affordable.

Porsche's "I Can" campaign targeted mobile consumers on Weather.com and Yahoo and encouraged consumers to click on banner ads that said, "You can own one, click to see how" and "Can you afford a Porsche? Just say "I can." The four-month-long mobile initiative outperformed Porsche's broader campaign.

"The overall strategy was to emphasize the affordability of Porsche products to people who didn't think this car brand was in their reach," said David Katz, vice president of mobile advertising and publisher services at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. "Porsche was trying to touch buyers on the go."

When consumers clicked through, they arrived at campaign's WAP site at http://m.porscheusa.com. There they could view Porsche models and prices and click-to-call a dealer.

Porsche found that consumers clicked most over the weekend, while out shopping or test-driving vehicles.

The carmaker thought mobile would be a good fit because its buyers can be classified as technologically savvy.

The campaign was inspired by company research that shows that majority of consumers believe that the car's price tag and ownership costs were higher than they really were.

The mobile initiative delivered 22 of the campaign's overall digital traffic and the click-through rate was six times better than Porsche's online-display advertising.

The carmaker plans to relaunch the mobile campaign in the spring to promote the March debut of the new Cayman and Boxster models.

Porsche isn't the only big brand that has seen good results running ads on Yahoo's mobile properties.

Visa wanted a multi-screen approach to promote their tie in with the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Visa ran banner ads on Yahoo's Mobile Olympic site. Ultimately, the goal of the campaign was to drive traffic to Visa's mobile site at http://visa.mobi/goworld and engage users with a rich mobile experience through background stories on featured athletes.

"What I liked about this campaign is that Porsche came in with a clear objective and was really pushing affordability," Mr. Katz said. "We thought they had simple, yet relevant mobile experiences."

"Porsche really took advantage of mobile in good ways and they made use of our Yahoo behavioral targeting tools," he said.