The company is running the mobile advertising campaign within Pandora’s iPhone application. Walmart has used a variety of different mobile mediums in the past to drive revenue.

“The Walmart campaign is pretty effective,” said Simon Buckingham, CEO of Appitalism, New York.

“It continues their everyday low price theme to office supplies,” he said.

Mr. Buckingham is not affiliated with Walmart. He commented based on his expertise on the subject.

Walmart did not respond to press inquiries.

Driving sales
The Walmart mobile banner ad features logos from brands such as Sharpie, PaperMate and Georgia Pacific and reads “Brand-name office supplies at everyday low prices. Browse Now.”

When consumers tap on the mobile ad, they are redirected to the company’s mobile site where they can shop products from the featured brands.

Additionally, consumers can search for other products and browse by categories including top-rated, best sellers and price.

“I think the banner ad is a little cluttered with five brands listed and the browse now button is a little small,” Mr. Buckingham said. “I’d have selected three brands and maybe used another brighter background color as opposed to dark blue which doesn’t stand out.

“The tag line ‘brand name office supplies at everyday low prices’ is a little long and not exactly catchy,” he said. “Office supplies alone would probably have sufficed given that the brands are listed.”

Past initiatives
Over the past few months, Walmart has been making mobile a prominent tool in its marketing efforts.

In September, Walmart showed its commitment to augmented reality as a way to enhance the in-store shopping experience with the release of an augmented reality application (see story).

Last month, Walmart and American Express teamed up to launch a prepaid card called Bluebird, with mobile playing a key role in simplifying deposits, account management and person-to-person payments (see story).

“Real estate is scarce on mobile devices so brevity is a luxurious necessity with this medium,” Mr. Buckingham said.

“Upon clicking on the banner ad, the design of the mobile site is effective and legible and works well although its always daunting when there are more than 30,000 items listed in a search result – especially on a mobile device,” he said.

Final Take