Burger King, MasterCard Sponsor Specialized Mobile Web Content

Major content providers are initiating special programming for mobile devices and partnering with major brands to provide sole sponsorship of that content.

Men’s lifestyle magazine Maxim is now offering specialized content for mobile devices found at mobile.maxim.com, including jokes of the day, forums, and even streaming videos of “Girls of the Day.” To do this they’ve partnered with fast food giant Burger King as sponsor.

Separately, credit card giant MasterCard Worldwide has partnered with Fox to create a series of 26 short episodes for mobile devices based on the television series “Bones” with mobile episodes entitled “Bones: Skeleton Crew.” In addition to sponsoring what it’s calling Mobisodes, MasterCard will also be incorporated into the storyline. The mobile episodes, portraying the forensic detectives, will be available from Sprint TV, and later Fox.com.

It’s not the first time both MasterCard and Burger King have experimented with online content or reaching consumers over mobile devices. Prior to its Fox content partnership, MasterCard sponsored Lost Beginnings and Lost Connections, online components of the ABC TV show “Lost,” as well as online content for ABC Family and TNT. Burger King is already providing mobile content to consumers such as store location finders, found at wap.bk.com, and “virtual lunches,” which made providing mobile connections with the fast food company easier for Maxim, according to Russell Kern, director of business development for Dennis Digital, the interactive arm Dennis Publishing Inc., which publishes Maxim, Blender, Stuff and The Week magazines.

“We developed an online program with BK where you could have a virtual lunch with a Maxim hottie. The BK banners on the Maxim Mobile website click through to the BK mobile website,” says Kern. “The one key take away would be that advertisers now have an opportunity to get in front of their desired audience through a more personal media channel and interact with them [in a way] they can’t through television or online.”