CTIA Mobile Barcodes William Chip Hoffman NeoMedia
The CEO of Neomedia’s experience showed at CTIA where he delivered a precise account of the mobile barcode market. Out of everyone on the panel, Chip Hoffman used insight, accounts and real examples to enforce NeoMedia’s credibility.
What struck me the most was the number of hot topics and issues Chip managed to squeeze into this presentation that focused on the need for standards, the issues of interoperability and the demand for seamless services.
What I also didn’t know and got extremely excited about is the code customisation. Basically, codes can be routed and categorised by service and age or language. This means that when a person is viewing a code the results are customised to the individual user.
This means that a person in India would get the results in the local language and an under-18’s would only get appropriate content. This is marvellous. I have to admit – I had never thought about that.
I would have thought that the advertising campaign determined the language – but with services such as this – any campaign can reach millions of people and cater to them individually.
NeoMedia is a platform enabler with push and pull mechanisms for mobile barcodes. This was a great overview and the ability to localise barcodes to the consumer is a feat that only serves to impress.
But, what I didn’t like was the fact that NeoMedia didn’t clearly define the issues with regards to entertainment barcode services (reading) and enabling (on device). The distinction between enabling services and offering readers (Neoreader) is not clear. I don’t think that operators or device manufacturers have realised the issue regarding barcode readers and the cost involved with pushing readers on phones and installing readers into the entertainment industry.
Not only Neom, but all the companies in the session have a responsibility to educate, simply.
Related News:
- CTIA: William Chip Hoffman CEO and Director NeoMedia
- CTIA Showstoppers: NeoMedia is a start-up
- CTIA White Paper on Mobile Barcodes Part 2 – Bena Roberts turns green
- NeoMedia shows off Optical Messaging Interchange at Mobile World Congress
- Mobile Barcodes NeoReader on the iPhone vs Nokia N95 Barcode Scanner
One Response to “CTIA Mobile Barcodes William Chip Hoffman NeoMedia”
Hi Bena,
Sorry you missed the great discussions some of participated in a while back on code customization. However, the limits are not just on age, language and service.
Also included in the possibilities are gender, and specific location, with out the use of GPS. This also applies to the direct method as well as the indirect method of bar code clicking.
There are also multiple ways to accomplish this, both through the web site doing the marketing, or through the bar code reader and the coding within the 2D bar code.
Many of the bar code readers available now, also automatically detect your phone model, and provider when you go to download the reader software.
This all ties in to the concept of Opt-In mobile marketing, where the consumer before using the bar code reader application the first time, is asked to fill in some non identifying information directly stored in the reader application itself, such as gender, age and zip code.
On the other hand for those readers which do not ask for this voluntary information, when they are directed to a website for a marketing campaign, the first page of the web site may require the same opt in information, to provide the consumer with the most applicable products or services for their demographics.
Age and gender probably the most relevant, since many products are gender related. For instance a marketer doing a campaign for bath and body oils probably wouldn’t want to target mobile users who are male, in their mid 40’s since they probably don’t buy many bath oils or body lotions. On the same note, a 16 year old, probably isn’t going to be targeted with marketing campaigns for the new Lexus coming out on the market.
However, if the GPS option on most mobile phones is opened up to marketers, most I expect will use the GPS function for location pin pointing rather then zip codes, since with GPS they can be quite a bit more precise in determining retail locations within a closer proximity to the user.
Comment made on April 7th, 2008 at 5:56 amLeave a Comment