Simon says, "Buy a Buick." And many consumers, at least according to research from mobile ad provider Greystripe, will as a result of Buick's latest mobile ad campaign. Greystripe teamed up with comScore to study the impact of its proprietary Immersion Ads, a melange of rich media within mini-applications similar to Apple's iAds, and the new ad units hit a home run in a brand awareness study.

Buick ran the campaign from December 2009 through April 2010 for its Lacrosse sedan. The ads featured a Simon Says game where consumers tapped different colored tires on a Buick Lacrosse; the interactive ad unit was Greystripe's bid to play catch up to Apple's much buzzed-about iAds. The iAds have become brand and agency darlings almost instantly, and that's without much trial (per AdAge). Greystripe's Immersion Ads, on the other hand, now have some data to back up their "revolutionary" claim.

comScore found that click-through rates (CTRs) on the Immersion ads reached four percent; CTRs on Greystripe's static ads hovered in the one percent range. The ads boosted brand awareness by 35 percent and purchase intent by 21 percent. On average, Greystripe's static ads induced a nine percent lift in brand awareness and just a five percent lift in purchase intent.

Novel, engaging and addictive, it seems that consumers remembered the Buick Lacrosse because they learned to kinesthetically through Greystripe's games and interactive video. Ultimately, 53 percent of people exposed to the campaign recalled the Buick Lacrosse vs. just four percent in the control group. 

Greystripe's results seem promising, but some of the strong performance could be due to a rise in mobile ad productivity and response overall. Some experts insist that the medium itself -- multi-featured mobile phones -- are driving a new wave of consumer interest in mobile content and advertising  mobile content. As Mike Dobson, president of location-based mobile media provider Telemapics, told GPS World: “Remember, at this time, it is not the mobile services that are generating the demand. Instead, the demand is the result of the sexiness of the mobile phone device. Sometime during the next 18 months, however, it will be the applications and services that begin to drive the market.”

Rich, immersive ads like Greystripe's and Apple's iAds have certainly caught the marketing worlds' imagination, despite concerns from some web developers about speed and efficiency of the iAds platform, and doubts about whether mobile ad interest just another internet bubble. Still, Greystripe's results will likely usher in the launch of a slew of similar campaigns, from advertisers hoping to cash in on consumer interest before that fresh "new ad unit" scent fades.