Out-of-home advertising (including billboards, posters on the tube, ads on street furniture) is predicted to be the fastest growing non-internet form of advertising.  From Billboard Boom, The Economist, April 20 2011.

The reason is the switch to digital: "The falling price and improving quality of flat-screen displays mean that static posters printed on paper are being replaced by snazzy digital commercials with moving pictures, sound and sometimes interactive features. As some advertising media, especially newspapers, see their audiences fade, streets, airports and other public spaces are becoming crowded with more potential viewers than ever, as people continue moving to cities and travel more."

 

 

From The Economist briefing ("Peggy Sue got old", 9 April 2011):

• TV: "every network except Fox had a median age of 50 or over last year. That is significant because advertisers tend to be most interested in how a show rates among people aged between 18 and 49" ... "The young are not watching less TV. But some of their viewing is now done through computer screens."
• Newspapers: "Between 2002 and 2010 the proportion of American papers’ regular readers who were aged 55 or more rose from 37% to 46%. Fully 43% of readers of Britain’s Daily Telegraph and Daily Express are at least 65 years old, according to the National Readership Survey. Such papers are littered with advertisements for comfortable shoes, cruises and stairlifts." ... "The reason why newspaper readers are ageing so quickly is simple: the young are abandoning print faster than everyone else. They may pick up free papers to read on public transport, but when reception is good they tend to plump for mobile phones and the internet".
• Music: "the young have drifted to illegal file-sharing and, more recently, to free streaming services such as Spotify. By and large, the middle-aged and old have not." ... "They don’t download, and they don’t want to download".

 

2d code put the record straight: "QR Codes are cheap, visible, easy to implement, in use, spreading rapidly and anyone can create one in a few seconds. Do not expect to see QR Codes die any time soon."

"It is much more likely that they [QR codes] were discontinued because of a combination of lack of demand, the availability of an increasing number of alternative sources and because they were more trouble than they were worth."

"Top education publishers McGraw-Hill [...]  and Pearson [...] have invested in Inkling, a startup that is adding uber-interactive features to textbooks downloaded via its iPad app; for instance, a textbook supported by Inkling would allow multiple students reading the same book to ask questions of each other [...]"

From: PaidContent.org

Dubit research showed 1,000 11-18 year olds a QR code:

• 43% identified it as something to be read by a phone
• 19% "admitted they didn’t know what it was"
• 33% recognized it as a QR code (others used different names, including RFID tag)
• 19% had used QR reading software
• 74% of those who had used a QR code said it was worth doing.

"Marketers can’t just stick a QR code on a poster or in an advert, teens need to be told what to do with them."

We saw this first reported by 2d-Code. 

From The Guardian: "Google's Android overtook the long-time market leader, Nokia's Symbian, as the world's most popular smartphone platform in the fourth quarter, according to the research firm Canalys" adding the "recent forecast expects Android use to continue to grow at least twice as fast as the smartphone market itself".

The Economist comments: "Apple will probably get a boost this year from Verizon Wireless’s new iPhone service in America." 

Regional UK publisher Northcliffe are looking to gain advertising revenue from their user-contributed local sites.

“We’re going to be taking the technology platform we’ve built (for LocalPeople) and merging it with the ThisIs sites,” Morgan [CEO] told analysts. “So local people can concentrate on finding a garage, finding a plumber in such a way that provides a long tail of local advertisers - people who aren’t advertising in the local press, we think we can get them in."

"News has its place but news alone is not going to produce that flow through to looking at ads. Investment is going to go heavily in to local information content."

From paidContent.org 25 Nov, 2010.

The Google ebookstore has launch in the US, supporting PDF and ePUB formats.  So while many devices are supported, it's notable that the Kindle is not.  Or as Google put it: "Currently, Google eBooks are not compatible with Amazon Kindle devices, though we are open to supporting them in the future."

US only for now.  Read more from "Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices".

According to a study from QR code company Nellymoser, Microsoft Tag is going well in the US magazine publishing sector for customer engagement.

The study looked at the QR code usage as call to action mechanics in the top 100 magazines (by circulation) available on US national newsstands for Sep, Oct and Nov 2010.

It found that where 2D bar codes were used, Microsoft Tag was used in 81.6% of cases, and QR codes in 13.6% (JagTag and Spyder make up the remaining 4.8%).

The tags were used in adverts (58.5%) and a little less in editorial content (41.5%).  

The codes delivered:

• Video (51.6%)
• Micro site (21.1%)
• Competitions (16.6%)
• Coupons (3.6%)
• Stores (2.4%)
• Music (0.6%)

"More than 80% of action codes are placed on the bottom half of the page, the traditional location for a call to action."

Via 2d code.

Txteagle is a service "which distributes small jobs via text messaging in return for small payments". It is aimed at the 4.6 billion mobile phone users in developing countries. "It already has the largest contract-labour force in Kenya and new ways of using it are being found all the time. Recently a large media firm asked [txteagle creator] Mr Eagle for help in monitoring its television commercials across Africa. The company was concerned that, although it had paid for broadcasting rights, its ads could be replaced with others by local television companies. So txteagle pays locals to watch and then text notes about which ads are shown."

Source: The Economist, 30 Oct 2010, p. 83

http://www.economist.com/node/17366137