While Black Friday brought a flurry of shoppers to retail stores, it also brought a flurry of barcode scans according to NeoMedia.

The company saw a dramatic increase of more than 240% in mobile barcode scans via its app on Black Friday compared to last year, including a 13% jump in 2D scans over 1D.  Looking deeper at the most popular types of barcodes being scanned, 2D is the front-runner by far with roughly 87% versus just 13% for 1D.  In 2010 for comparison, 74% of scans were 2D versus 26% for 1D codes.

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Today we continue 3Seventy’s “MobileMinute” weekly video series, where Andy Kennedy takes on the topic of QR codes.

For frequent readers of MMW you know that we’ve always had mixed feelings on QR codes.  While the concept is more than promising and adoption is only getting stronger, a majority of the implementations we see today translate to poorly executed campaigns that actually detract from the benefits QR codes are supposed to provide.

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Hoping to help marketers unlock the potential of marketing with mobile barcodes, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) on Thursday published a new white paper titled “Mobile Barcodes: an Overview for Marketers.”

The MMA says that the white paper explains in a concise, easy to understand fashion how marketers can leverage mobile barcodes to give their customers access to information, multi-media content, promotional opportunities, retail store locations, discounts and coupons, samples, and more.

And the timing of the white paper’s release couldn’t be more opportune.

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State lotteries are routinely turning to the mobile channel to inspire would-be ticket buyers to press their luck.

In another illustrative example of this burgeoning phenomenon, this week Hipcricket announced that the Virginia Lottery has selected its platform as part of a multichannel mobile marketing initiative.

The Virginia Lottery is working to provide its players with a number of choices for interacting with the organization, including QR (Quick Response) codes, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and an opt-in mobile alert program to drive consumer engagement.

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“I don’t want to grow up… I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid,” the famous jingle goes. But while the legendary toy retailer’s customers may not want to grow up, the company’s marketing strategies certainly have.

This week, Toys ‘R’ Us revealed that QR code integration has come to the toy retailer in full ahead of the mad rush of holiday shoppers that will drive big business for Toys ‘R’ Us in the weeks ahead.

The QR codes in question are making their debut in “The Great Big Toys ‘R’ Us Book” catalog, which will enable shoppers to learn more about a wide array of products before actually purchasing them. The company says that “The Great Big Toys ‘R’ Us Book” will begin turning up at stores and in mailboxes this weekend.

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The folks over at SMS marketing provider Tatango have been busy lately.  Not only have they produced some awesome infographics on smartphone usage, but the company is in the middle of “QR Code Week,” an entire week dedicated to producing resources and tools with the goal of helping marketers integrate QR codes into their SMS marketing campaigns.

To start things off, the company’s CEO, Derek Johnson, put together a video tutorial as part of its “Tatango University” series in which he explained how to integrate QR codes into SMS marketing campaigns.  For example, allowing users to scan a barcode can automatically pre-populate an SMS message, which allows the user to simply click send to engage with the campaign.  This is good news for the 40% of mobile users that carry smartphones, but for the other 60% that don’t, he explains the importance of also including a standard text-in call-to-action below the QR code.

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The folks over at Microsoft Tag just published an interesting infographic that details the “rise and fall of advertising media,” which compares the top media channels for advertising and the vast differences in spend and overall growth (or lack thereof).

As you can see below, mobile continues to blow every other media channel out of the water in terms of growth.  In looking at the change in advertising spend between 2009 and 2010, mobile topped the list at 75% overall, followed by social media at 32%, Online advertising at 14%, TV at 11%, radio at 9%, outdoor advertising at 2% and magazines at 1%.  Newspaper advertising was the only medium with a decrease in ad spend, falling 7% between 2009 and 2010.

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