Will Connecting Offline to Online with QR Codes Take Off in the U.S.?

QR codes have been ubiquitous in Japan and other parts of Asia since the mid-2000s in a wide variety of applications, from Out-Of-Home advertising to product packaging to gravestones. Thanks to the top-down proliferation of native hardware support, Japanese consumers have been enjoying the ability to get more information, rich media, games, coupons and direct commerce opportunities via this offline-to-online connection.

In the United States this nascent technology has gained a cult following among tech geeks and experimental advertisers but general adoption has languished.

This straightforward session will dive into the market factors that are the prerequisites for the social tipping point that will bring this consumer behavior into the mainstream.

Topics addressed:

- The pertinent distinctions between Japanese mobile handsets and domestic smartphones, especially as it pertains to carrier hegemony in top-down feature innovation driving critical mass.

- Whether QR code scanning can successfully free-ride on the proliferation of UPC barcode scanning smartphone applications intended for comparison shopping.

- The growth in penetration of HTML5-enabled webkit browsers and the attractiveness of geo-aware & demo-targeted experiences to make OOH advertising engaging, interactive and perhaps most importantly, quantifiable.

- Can QR codes create an “internet of things” that allows for the indexing and socialization of real-world items or will this be the province of image recognition technologies like Google Goggles.