There's much buzz about the ever increasing impact of short code applications in mobile advertising and marketing. Sending simple texts messages when you see an advertisement in the world of old media such as magazines and newspapers, and engaging the brand through new media mobile. Look at ShopText as a great example of this and their campaigns with Cosmopolitan and other Hearst magazine properties. An emerging leader in the mobile short code marketing category.
Yet, short codes may be too early and too late. Now emerging mobile technology surrounding QR codes and dot matrix codes are starting to demonstrate their technological innovation. Instead of six to 10 key punches, now you can easily take a picture of a code and have the same functionality.
While at CTIA IT in San Francisco three weeks ago, I saw the next iteration of image recognition, Snaptell. The Snaptell solution doesn't even need the code. You just snap a photo of the advertisement and you're off. One touch functionality.
Listen to my interview with G.D. Ramkumar, the CEO of Snaptel ( 9 mins)
Interactive Media in Magazines
You can see how Snaptell works in the real world in the September 9, 2008 issue of ESPN Magazine. They've partnered with Snaptell with all their advertisers for this issue. The reader snaps a picture of an ad their interested in. Their phone is directed to a mobile web landing page, and they get more information about the product/service plus cool rewards, like ring tones, screen savers, games, ring back tones, free-miums!
In the background, the brand is able to easily access detailed information about the user, such as type of handset, network subscription, and other data which the reader might be interested in sharing, essentially all the actionable metrics which make these mobile advertising offerings of such great contextual value. Snaptell provides an end to end solution for mobile marketing that includes campaign management, carrier gateway integration, content delivery, and an intuitive, easy to use interface for the advertising agency to set up a campaign. Essentially the "snap on" Snaptell solution puts simple short codes to shame.
How'd they do that?
The technology behind mobile image recognition is quite intriguing. Interlaced into the advertising image are feature points which are picked up by the phone, and compared against a data base, with over a billion components of images. Within a second it identifies and recognizes the feature points and activates an interactive instruction application. You don't even need to have the full image or even a majority of the image in picture, you can crop it, capture just a corner, and it still works. The payload is through an MMS message being sent of the image. The coolest part is that it doesn't need to be still images such as a magazine or print ad.
It works with video, too! Just watch a tv commercial, click an image, et voila, and actionable event is being requested of you. Pretty slick technology.
Look for Snaptell in Men's Health, ESPN Magazine, Wired, and other magazines in the future.