Locations
What do you do if you’re walking down the street and you see an advertisement for something you’re interested in? Do you take a mental picture of the website address and try to remember to check it out later? Or perhaps you quickly type the URL address into your phone? What if you could simply point your phone’s camera at the advertisement and have it automatically take you to the website? Would you consider that a huge step forward in the continually evolving marriage between advertising and technology, or just another ease-of-use phenomenon that may never catch on?
Recently, on Jimm Wagner’s blog, he proclaimed that “Text URLs Are So Last Year” due to Microsoft’s new Tag Technology. There’s a lot of buzz – both positive and negative – about Tag on other industry blogs such as i started something and TechCrunch.
What the heck is a Tag, you ask?
Tags take the barcode technology of yesteryear to new heights with sophisticated technology that allows you to quickly and easily create personalized Tags which can be used in online and print media. Simply create the Tag – it’s easy and free to do so – and place it into your ad. Consumers can then point their internet-ready phone cameras to the Tag and voila, they are directed to your content. The Tags are smaller and much more colorful than previous generations of barcodes, so potentially much more appealing for use in printed material.
So, mobile tagging. Are you already using it, or just now learning about it? Do you think it’s a good idea, or a bad idea? Is it useful, or unnecessary? Tell us what you think.