The company is running the mobile ads within Pandora’s iPhone application. Home Depot has ran mobile ads within Pandora before to drive traffic to its in-store locations.

“As long as Home Depot has a way to gauge the consumer touch points of the ad then yes, it is extremely smart to run time-sensitive ads on mobile,” said Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis, Atlanta.

“Time sensitive ads give a great way of A/B testing what will work and what will not work on a mobile ad, and allowing the ability to change the next ad to reflect activity measured,” she said.

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

Home Depot did not respond to press inquiries.

Sale time
The Home Depot mobile banner ad reads “Black Friday is Back. Shop Now.”

When consumers tap on the mobile ad they are redirected to the company’s mobile site where they can browse products that are currently on sale.

For example, consumers can get 50 percent off select commodity mulch.

Additionally, several of the featured sale products are only on sale for four days and many can only be picked up in-store.

Through the mobile ad consumers can also shop indoor and outdoor savings, as well as find the nearest Home Depot location.

Running a mobile ad campaign such as this is a great way to educate consumers to shop via their mobile device.

In addition, offering timely deals and incentives – in this case, savings – is a great way to get consumers to tap on the mobile ad.

Past efforts
Home Depot has been ramping up its mobile presence over the past year.

Last year, Home Depot rolled out a nationwide mobile bar code program to influence purchase intent in-store and drive consumers to its locations via digitally-enhanced direct mail pieces and print ads (see story).

In January, the company tested a PayPal-enabled mobile payment solution at select stores (see story).

Most recently, Home Depot ran a mobile ad campaign to promote its line of floor products and lead consumers to a commerce-enabled mobile site (see story).

“I see mobile ad’s ramping up as microsites start to ramp up, with the ability for companies to make every aspect of their marketing and advertising portable, the need for mobile ad’s linked to mobile landing pages becomes a very relevant use for adding to the measurement on lift for campaigns company wide,” Ms. Troutman said.

“Mobile is the horizontal that threads through every vertical of a company as an extension of the brand, even the back office,” she said.

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