Have you noticed recently the abundance of QR code marketing hate out there? Don’t get me wrong, there has always been QR code haters, but recently it seems like these numbers are starting to multiply at an alarming rate. I can understand the hate towards the design aspects (design is always subjective), but you’ve gotta be stupid to think that marketing through QR codes isn’t here to stay, in a big way.

When I speak to this ever growing mob of QR code marketing haters, all of their arguments can usually be boiled down to three points. While I usually refrain from arguing with people that don’t know what they’re talking about, in this post I’m going to make an exception because someone has to stick up for the QR code. Below are the arguments against marketing with QR codes, and why these people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Argument #1

“Derek, consumers don’t know what QR codes are, they don’t know how to scan them, and they aren’t interested in scanning them.”

You are right in that only 6.2% of consumers have scanned a QR code, but that’s a vanity metric, a metric that is interesting to look at, but has no weight. You want the real metric, the one that means something to advertisers. Nearly 40% of consumers age 25-34 have scanned a QR code, even better is that 1 out of 3 consumers that have scanned a QR code have a household income of at least $100,000. If the 25-34 year old age demographic is any indication of what is to come for other demographics, QR codes could quickly become the holy grail for mobile marketing.

Those numbers also don’t take into account that only 40% of consumers have a smartphone, meaning that 60% of consumers, even if they wanted to scan a QR code, aren’t able to at this time. As smartphone adoption continues to creep up, the majority of consumers will soon be exposed to QR code engagement.

Argument #2

“Derek, QR codes are going to be crushed by Near Field Communication (NFC).”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as excited about the adoption of near field communication (NFC) as the next person. I can’t wait for that moment when I can replace my bulky wallet with my mobile phone, and I think NFC will get us to that place. You’ve gotta be stupid though to think that NFC will ever replace QR codes in marketing.

While there will be certain situations where marketers will be able to replace QR codes with NFC, the majority of QR code scans come from marketing channels that don’t work well with NFC (either from a technical or cost function), such as printed magazines/newspapers, product packaging, websites, posters/flyers, business cards, storefronts and TV. I just don’t see magazines or newspapers installing individual NFC chips in each advertisement, do you?

Argument #3

“Derek, like bellbottoms in the 1970′s, QR codes will be the marketing fad of this decade.”

A”fad” is defined as something that is short lived, but with a direct correlation between smartphone and QR code adoption, this would mean that smarthphones will be short lived as well. Seriously, smartphones short lived? Have you seen reports on growth of smartphone adoption, or even recently how many new iPhones have been purchased? If you truly believe that QR codes are a fad, then you will also have to believe that smartphones are a fad, which would make you more stupid than I thought.

This whole thing reminds me of the story my father told me where back in the late ’80′s he tried to expense a mobile phone to the company he was working for. His bosses response after seeing the expense, “a mobile phone isn’t a business expense, it’s a toy… you can’t expense toys to the company”. Like his boss back then, and QR code haters now, you will eventually look back at your comments and think to yourself, how could I have been that stupid? Maybe it’s time to stop hating and start embracing, the consumer-engaging and soon to be ubiquitous Quick Response Code.

AT&T was quick to issue a statement regarding the decision, saying they were “surprised and disappointed by today’s action,” especially since they’d met with the DOJ repeatedly and had no indication that such an action was being contemplated.  ”We plan to ask for an expedited hearing so the enormous benefits of this merger can be fully reviewed,” explained Wayne Watts, AT&T senior executive VP and general counsel in a prepared statement.  ”The DOJ has the burden of proving alleged anti-competitive affects and we intend to vigorously contest this matter in court.”

AT&T outlines three reason it feels the merger is anything but anti-competitive:

• It helps solve our nation’s spectrum exhaust situation and improve wireless service for millions.
• Allows AT&T to expand 4G mobile broadband to another 55 million Americans, or 97% of the population.
• Results in billions of dollars in additional investment and tens of thousands of jobs, at a time when our nation needs them most.

While AT&T continues to preach the benefits of the merger, several others have vastly different opinions.  Washington D.C.-based public interest group Public Knowledge issued a statement attributed to it’s legal director Harold Feld, saying “fighting this job-killing merger is the best Labor Day present anyone can give the American people.  AT&T’s effort to recreate ‘Ma Cell’ by holding rural broadband hostage and threatening American jobs deserves nothing but scorn.  The FCC should move as quickly as possible to follow the lead of the Department of Justice and reject the merger.”

We spoke to White & Case Attorney Maury Mechanick, a former senior executive at COMSAT Corporation and Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, who tells us “the Justice Department is clearly convinced that harm to competition from the proposed merger would outweigh any purported public interest benefits, including those alleged to increase broadband penetration in the U.S.  If the merger had gone forward, the market power and advanced service feature capabilities of three major operators would have made it increasingly difficult for smaller cellular operators to attract sufficient customers to survive in the marketplace.”

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the DOJ’s decision and the proposed merger in general, please feel free to speak your mind in the comments below.

“The major wireless carriers came together in 2003 to create short codes to allow marketers to easily communicate with consumers. Since then text messaging has exploded in popularity. Short codes haven’t seen growth to match. Why? A long, opaque and expensive setup process prevents all but the largest brands from marketing to their customers with text messages,” the company explained in its post.  ”Enter the long code: instant setup, affordable transparent pricing, and no one standing between your company and your customers. Short codes were supposed to bring mobile marketing to the masses. Long codes, virtual mobile phone numbers that can send and receive text messages stand ready to finally fulfill that promise.”

Put simply, “long codes” are basic ten-digit phone numbers that are connected to messaging gateways to send and receive text messages exactly the same way short codes do — without the long approval and provisioning processes.  The company notes that people who use VoIP providers like Google Voice can’t access short codes because of the underlying infrastructure, which isn’t the case with long codes, for example.  As the company puts it: “long codes just work.”

Another large barrier presented by short codes is the inherent vulnerability of being at the whims of the carriers.  We’ve covered numerous instances of carriers shutting down SMS campaigns or blocking short codes because they don’t agree with the content or the brands behind it.  Long codes, the company suggests, come with none of these roadblocks and offer numerous advantages such as:

• Instant setup: Get going in less than 24 hours instead of 8 to 12 weeks.
• Cut out the middlemen and save money: No aggregator fees and contracts, and no passed along short code leasing costs mean your campaign can be run at a fraction of the price of a short code campaign.
• The widest coverage: If a customer can send and receive text messages you can reach them with a long code.
• The fastest messaging throughput available. Send 5 messages/second with a single long code. Pool multiple long codes for unlimited throughput.

“Do you need to get going tomorrow, not twelve weeks from now? Do you have the patience to work through program briefs, reams of carrier regulations, and constantly changing MMA guidelines? Do you have $12,000 to spend over the next year? These are deal breakers for 99% of the businesses in America,” the company concludes in its post.  ”The long code, a solution that has been with us since the beginning, is poised to kill the short code.”

What do you think?  Are you a marketer that’s tired of the short code processes?  Do you think long codes are the future of text-based mobile marketing?  Do you think short codes will ever die off?  Let us know your experiences and opinions…

In an open letter guest post published on TechCrunch this weekend, Jones describes the need for net neutrality to apply to mobile platforms as well, offering several examples of carriers be selective in the mobile services they allow consumers, with the aforementioned situations surrounding T-Mobile being the most recent.

“T-Mobile plans to suddenly institute a charge for every text message that ChaCha’s messaging aggregator sends on ChaCha’s behalf to T-Mobile customers.  Never mind that T-Mobile is already making a small fortune charging their customers for text plans or on a per-text basis, and never mind that T-Mobile already charged profitable and fair rates to aggregators and content providers including ChaCha,” said Jones.  ”Noted global expert on mobile telecom, Tomi Ahonen has written that, for carriers, texting is ‘the most profitable mass market service in the economic history of mankind…with a profit margin [that] is north of 98%.’ Oh, and by the way, in the second quarter of 2010, T- Mobile USA reported service revenues of $4.70 billion up from $4.63 billion in the first quarter of 2010.”

Jones argues that by T-Mobile only levying the increase to those going through aggregators, their logic is irrational due to the fact that Twitter and Facebook — who won’t see their fees increase — are the ones responsible for the influx of SMS messages being sent over its network.

“Interestingly, T-Mobile is exempting Twitter and Facebook (which send collectively about 15 times as many messages to T-Mobile users than ChaCha does) from the new charges because they won’t be subject to the tax like the rest of us,” he continues.  ”Even more interesting is that, to the extent T-Mobile has any congestion from all the increased texting, Twitter and Facebook are driving the lion’s share of the explosion of texts coming from content providers, so why are all the other publishers footing the bill on behalf of Twitter and Facebook? Because this charge will be passed along to ChaCha, amounting to a 600% price increase on October 1st, we have no choice but to drop T- Mobile customers from our SMS service, unless something changes.”

“If T-Mobile moves forward with its “twitter tax” that is rumored to begin on Oct 1^st, ChaCha absolutely will drop T-Mobile from our service.  T-Mobile is a carrier that doesn’t understand the realities of content businesses including Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, and ChaCha.  ChaCha has more than 15 million monthly unique users for whom we answer over 2 million questions every day. The vast majority of these answers are delivered by SMS text. T-Mobile is already getting paid by subscribers for these texts and they are paid something already by aggregators/publishers.  Now, they plan to impose an egregious and unacceptable tax.

Given that the costs to deliver text are miniscule, T-Mobile already makes profits from what they charge their customers, aggregators, and publishers.  There, T-mobile is “triple dipping.”  We don’t see any reason for this, other than greed.

This will be unfortunate for T-Mobile users who will either need to switch to another carrier to enjoy texting services, or access similar services via the mobile web and/or mobile apps (for which T-Mobile gets nothing incrementally). Starting today we will make it clear to our T-Mobile users that ChaCha would still be available on other carriers and/or via the mobile web or mobile apps.

If T-Mobile moves forward they will give their subscribers reasons to consider other carriers and/or prevent defectors from AT&T/Sprint/Verizon from considering T-Mobile.  Also, their proposed pricing move will completely stifle innovation in the space, further harming T-Mobile customers.

ChaCha knows that our real-time “answers” and dbase of billions of answers is valuable and can be leveraged within any of these platforms.  We prefer that T-Mobile not take this step, but if they do, we will no longer provide our free SMS service to T-Mobile and shift the traffic to other carriers and platforms. It’s unfortunate for T-Mobile subscribers since they will miss out on ChaCha and many free services because of this short-sighted move by T-Mobile.”

Wah-wuh. I’d momentarily forgotten that Hulu’s inability to be played on phones is due mostly to content owners’ decision to make them unavailable on the mobile platform. My EVO still has full Flash capability, an improvement from the so-called “Flash Lite” support of earlier Android incarnations (not to mention Apple’s non-support of the format). But it was still a bummer not to be able to rewatch the Glee finale in bed during a bout of insomnia. And so for me, an enthusiastic mobile video and mobile Internet consumer, the new Android is about as much an improvement as the Malibu Stacy doll on The Simpsons getting a new hat.

It’s a sad example of marketers and branding experts failing to leverage technology and please their customers. I’m sure they know just how voraciously consumers hunger for mobile video. Remember Justin wrote recently that, according to ABI Research, revenue from mobile video will jump to more than $2 billion in 2013, up almost 17-fold from just $121 million expected this year. People are willing to pay a lot for premium TV video shown by Hulu on their mobiles. And when I say “pay,” I’m not talking the most literal definition of fee-for-each-viewing, at which admittedly most consumers would balk.

The vast majority of viewers don’t mind sitting through revenue-generating ads while watching their favorite shows, i.e. the Hulu business model. Also, premium video can be bundled as part of a carrier’s services–I watched live World Cup games on ESPN’s mobile channel, for example–and content owners can receive a cut. Indeed, these business models are alive and thriving, even if they’re still in infancy. Besides World Cup matches, many networks allow a few of their shows to be available as full episodes on carriers’ video services. Since television content owners already have sources of revenue–ads on TV broadcasts and online offerings–they should be willing to take chances with monetizing mobile video, and offer full episodes of all their popular shows.

To be sure, I can understand that networks and production companies–and their legions of marketers and branding experts–want to be able to measure firm ROI before committing to mobile broadcasts. But they won’t get accurate results until they start allowing the same content they put over the air and online–on Hulu and on networks’ own sites–to be played on mobiles. Meanwhile, an Android 2.2 consolation prize is the new flashlight app on my EVO, which lets me use its camera flash (that’s flash with a lowercase “f”) as a personal floodlight. At least it’s better than a new doll hat.

The underlying message in Chang’s response is clear; nearly all ad creative is built using Flash, and Apple needs to face it.  ”Apple’s choice not to support Flash on its mobile devices creates huge roadblocks for advertisers,” Chang said in his response.  ”Today, it cannot be understated that almost 100% of agencies and their brand advertisers develop ad creatives in Flash using Adobe tools.”

He also criticizes Apple’s emphasis on HTML5, based on the fact that few development tools exist for creative purposes.  ”Currently, there are no comparable tools to create ads in HTML5, open or not, he continued.  ”This is partially an explanation as to why Apple/Quattro has opted to create the initial iAds, because no one else can, at least not in HTML5.”

Chang previously expressed his concerns with Apple’s “anti-Flash” mantra earlier this month when iAds was first announced, and has a pretty good reason for keeping a close eye on the Apple/Flash debacle.  Greystripe itself is known for its rich media “iFlash” ads which use transcoding methods to being a “Flash-like” experience to Apple’s Flash-less devices.

Chang concluded with a quote from Lars Bastholm, chief digital creative officer at Ogilvy, in his response today which seems to summarize the sentiment felt in many ad-agencies regarding Apple and Steve Jobs’ stance on Flash; “As a creative director, I can completely understand that they created this new baby and they want to make sure it gets born looking gorgeous. But as a creative director, I don’t feel completely comfortable letting Apple do the creative.”

One such person with a keen interest is Greystripe CEO Michael Chang, who yesterday released a response regarding his views on the whole situation.  Greystripe is an ad-network that utilizes Flash-based transcoding to bring the technology to Apple devices, and as such, was watching the iAd announcement very closely.

“True to Apple’s style, the company continues to improve their products and platforms based on consumer feedback.  We are thrilled with the iAd announcement, it’s a thumb’s up for mobile display and brand advertising,” explains Chang.  “Today Steve Jobs highlighted that mobile advertising is not all about search, that it needs to be interactive, elicit an emotional response and function within the app.  We agree 100% and have been doing this for over 18 months with our rich media iFlash ads.”

He then speaks of the difference between HTML5 and Flash for mobile display ads and the many questions left unanswered during the announcement.  “The in-game ad that Apple demoed today was almost exactly like Greystripe’s Alice in Wonderland interactive ad campaign.  The challenge that Apple faces is that they require HTML5, while almost all digital advertising is built in Flash,” Chang continues.  “Unfortunately Apple’s announcement today raised as many questions as it answered.”

Chang and the rest of the mobile-ad industry have these three questions to ask of Apple;

1. What is Apple’s pricing model – CPM, CPC, Cost per download, Cost per acquisition?
2. Will Apple/Quattro help create advertising collateral for brands or agencies?
3. What types of ad targeting will be possible with iAds?

Being only a day after the announcement, more details will likely come down the pike, but until then, the ambiguity surrounding iAd continues to raise questions.  One thing’s for sure, iAd will have monumental effects on mobile advertising as a whole, we just don’t know the extent of which yet.

After the event, during the Q&A portion, Steve Jobs was asked yet again about any future plans regarding Flash — even just in iAds — in which he promptly replied “no.”  It’s now clear that Apple will never use Flash, opting instead for a life of HTML5.  While I’m not saying there’s something wrong with HTML5 from an ad-unit point of view, it’s the simple fact that Flash is used in an astonishingly large amount of ad creative already in use from a brand’s inventory.

Now, when advertisers choose to adapt to the iAd platform for distribution, they’ll have to completely re-work their Flash-based ad-inventory instead of simply using the tried-and-true ad-units they already have.  What’s the solution?

I think with Apple’s long-term blockage of anything Flash, we’ll see an uprising of Flash-based transcoding to allow the same experiences Flash provides, but scaled to adapt to iPhones, iPod touches and iPads.  Greystripe has already made waves with its “iFlash” proprietary transcoding methods, and I think similar methods and fixes will be in the works very soon.  That is if Apple doesn’t block those moves as well, which is a strong possibility.

The CEO of Bluestreak Technology, the 2nd largest provider of embedded Flash solutions in the world, was readily anticipating any announcements from Apple this morning as well, and had this to say regarding its lack of Flash;

“From multi-tasking to folders, the new functionality Apple previewed for the upcoming version of the 4.0 OS addresses many of the features loyal iPhone users have demanded since the device’s launch,” said Dominique Jodoin, President and CEO of Bluestreak Technology.  “Glaringly absent, however, is support for Flash, a feature which, surveys indicate, consistently remains one of the top items consumers would like to have on the next generation of iPhones.  Flash is used on over 85% of the top 100 websites and 75% of all web videos.  Until the iPhone supports Flash technology, like most other wireless devices do, and, specifically, many competitive Android-powered devices, it will never offer a complete data services experience to consumers.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  What do you think? What is your answer to the lack-of-Flash problem?  Do you see other solutions besides Flash-based transcoding and work-arounds?

With increased interest surrounding mobile marketing, it’s interesting that proximity marketing has been largely looked over, though both concepts are fundamentally different.  While there’s really no definition that exists which separates the two, the easiest way to distinguish proximity marketing from mobile marketing is simply the concept of localized content. Potential advertising audiences must enter a “localized” area such as a grocery store or a shopping center in order to receive the advertisement with proximity marketing, while mobile marketing doesn’t require such an attribute.

Education of marketers in the U.S is one prohibiting factor in my mind, with almost no news coming out regarding the technology, even though numerous companies exist on U.S soil that provide proximity marketing solutions.  Marketers are already bombarded with so-called new-age marketing channels, and adding one more to the mix will confuse the masses even more than they already are.  Still, proximity marketing offers something even mobile marketing in large part can’t provide; being extremely inexpensive and very easy to integrate.

Integrating a proximity marketing campaign involves acquiring a simple, inexpensive module to place on-location, in billboards and posters, or even on people at events, and loading it up with content to send to consumers who come within close “proximity” of the module.  Once it’s in place, the module does everything, sending highly relevant, location-based ads and content without any further interaction on part of the marketer.  It’s a simple concept that has proven to be very successful in areas of the world with high usage, especially on a hyperlocal level.

Maybe I’m missing something here, which is why I ask you, the reader, to fill me in on why you think proximity marketing has fallen into obscurity.  Lack of bluetooth penetration? Lack of overall interest? Lack of education?  Take a moment and sound off in the comments.