Mobile Ads and Prod Placement for Toyota

Finally, made-for-mobile programming has ads! Phew!

Thanks to Toyota, episodes of a new cell phone spinoff of Fox’s “Prison Break” called “Prison Break: Proof of Innocence” will begin with 10-second ads for Toyota’s Yaris created by Publicis Groupe SA’s Saatchi & Saatchi. The 2-minute mini-shows will also highlight the teensy sedan, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Toyota aims to appeal to — get this — young consumers. Evidently, the TV show, “about a man who commits a crime so he can get thrown into jail and help his apparently falsely imprisoned brother break out,” is big with the 18-34 year-olds. The new “mobisodes,” as Fox refers to them, will be available to Sprint video subscribers beginning this week. Fox created a “24”-spinoff mobisode series last year called “24: Conspiracy.”

Three or four Proof of Innocence shows will be released each week. Sprint subscribers can watch them on-demand, and the rest of us can catch them on Toyota.com after two weeks. Fox.com has also developed a Toyota-branded “Prison Break” microsite within the Fox.com domain featuring show-related content like streaming video from the the Prison Break wrap party.

The story notes that “analysts put the deal in the ballpark of $10 million.”