Universal Studios Home Entertainment is enabling in-banner shopping for consumers on the go this holiday season with a mobile commerce advertising campaign.

The Universal Studios campaign, designed to drives sales of the DVD and Blu-ray editions of Quentin Tarantino’s box-office hit Inglourious Basterds, is powered by Adgregate Markets, a provider of transactional advertising and distributed commerce technology. The company claims that this is the first-ever mobile commerce ad campaign.

“Universal’s strategy is to provide consumers maximum flexibility and convenience when it comes to purchasing their favorite films, whether online or mobile,” said Henry Wong, CEO of Adgregate Markets, Sausalito, CA. Adgregate’s ShopAds capitalizes on impulse, speed and convenience—all things important to mobile users.

“This particular campaign is targeted towards 18-24-year-olds that are mobile-savvy, smartphone consumers of mainstream content—in this case iPhone users,” he said.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment is a unit of Universal Pictures, a division of Universal Studios. Universal Studios is a part of NBC Universal, a media and entertainment company specializing in the development, production and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience.

Coming to Blu-ray Hi-Def and DVD on Dec. 15 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger and Christoph Waltz.

The action-filled alternate history of World War II was written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has launched iPhone and iPod touch-enabled features to enhance the upcoming Blu-ray releases of various movies (see story).

Mobile commerce advertising
Adgregate’s mobile ShopAds let users viewing mobile advertisements engage, shop, pre-order and buy the release of Inglourious Basterds on Blu-ray and DVD directly within secure rich-media ad-units on mobile phones.

Consumers enter their credit card number in the mobile ad.

The Inglourious Basterds mobile ad campaign is independent of carriers, and in general Adgregate does not rely on the use of carriers’ infrastructure to complete purchases.

With the launch, Universal claims to be the first major media company to bring mobile commerce to its customers with on-the-go purchases of Blu-ray and DVD releases.

Ignited contributed media strategy to the initiative and Greystripe delivered the Inglourious Basterds ShopAds across its mobile ad network.

Universal is capitalizing on two significant trends—growth in mobile commerce and growth in mobile advertising.

Consumers are shopping via mobile phones more than ever.

According to Deloitte’s 24th Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends published in October, one in five shoppers plans on using a mobile phone to assist with holiday purchases, from researching prices and other product information to actually buying presents.

According to Yankee Group, mobile advertising revenues are forecasted to jump 60 percent this year to $184 million and grow to $566 million by 2013. 

Mobile commerce advertising is all about combining impulse, speed and convenience, according to Adgregate Markets. The fewer steps it takes for consumers to shop, the more effective campaigns will be.

Adgregate’s ShopAds enables major advertisers such as Universal Studios Home Entertainment to incorporate secure ecommerce functionality into any rich-media mobile ad campaign.

This approach significantly improves the performance of mobile ads by compressing the sales funnel and linking the point of discovery with the point of purchase, according to Adgregate Markets.

“Universal Studios Home Entertainment is an expert at media distribution, not mobile marketing innovation,” Mr. Wong said. “Adgregate brings the technology to the party.

“We believe the potential for mobile commerce is better realized if you can compress the number of steps a user goes through to complete a purchase,” he said.