To promote its new Sweet Deals value menu, Dairy Queen is making its way onto consumer cell phones. The soft-serve ice cream chain and digital agency space150 recently ran a pilot campaign to market the new menu using Mobile Posse's idle screen advertising platform.

Ads delivered using the Mobile Posse platform are unobtrusive since they're delivered during the phone's downtime. Also, all content is opt-in, so consumers needn't worry about getting spammed.

The DQ pilot campaign ran in March and saw click-through rates of around 22%. The Sweet Deals ads, which promoted meal options in the $3-$5 price range, were delivered at 5 p.m. to reach folks just as they were leaving work and starting to think about dinner plans.

Dairy Queen also pushed the value menu by sponsoring Mobile Posse's daily weather forecasts with a banner ad. More than half of all Mobile Posse users chose to receive the DQ ad, and more than two-thirds viewed the Dairy Queen-sponsored weather forecast at least once during the campaign.