May 04, 2011A mobile advertising system is initially being deployed in San Francisco—with other U.S. cities slated to follow during the coming weeks—using a technology that allows consumers who have NFC-enabled phones (such as Google's Nexus S) to access information, promotional materials and coupons by tapping their phones against NFC-enabled placards. The mTag system—developed by Blue Bite, a four-year-old provider of location-based mobile-marketing solutions—is being offered in partnership with Reach Media Group (RMG) Networks, a business that provides place-based news and entertainment, such as television programming, on digital signs and video screens throughout the United States.
The mTag placard currently measures 8 inches by 5 inches and has an adhesive layer on one side, with a logo, a Quick Response (QR) 2-D bar code and text, such as "tap here," printed on the other. The size of the placard might change with different applications, however. Embedded in each mTag placard is a passive 13.56 MHz passive RFID tag complying with the Near Field Communication (NFC) RFID standards. Blue Bite is presently testing several different NFC tag models, and has yet to select an NFC tag provider.
RMG Networks' digital out-of-home (DOOH) video screens are installed at businesses and in public places at which consumers typically have lengthy dwell times, such as coffee shops, health clubs and airports. The system, according to David Bruce, the company's VP of marketing, provides video content and advertising, with more than 200,000 display screens of a variety of sizes and form factors, depending on where they are installed, and with more than 70 million monthly viewers.
For the Blue Bite deployment, the RMG display will occasionally show videos informing customers that they can tap their NFC-enabled phones against a nearby mTag sticker (typically mounted at the point of sale, or at some other high-dwell-time location within the store) to access advertising data, coupons or other materials. When a phone is tapped against the mTag sticker, the tag's unique ID number is captured by the NFC reader in the mobile phone, which forwards that information to a Blue Bite server. Blue Bite's proprietary system knows exactly where that customer is located, and delivers targeted content to the phone, based on that particular sticker's location. Consumers currently lack an NFC-enabled phone can use their phone's camera to scan the QR 2-D bar code printed on the same mTag, which will then direct them to identical content.
Sometime during the next six months, says Daniel Trigub, Blue Bite's VP of business development, the company expects to have installed its mTag stickers at 75,000 sites at which RMG Networks' display screens are already in operation, throughout San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. Each tag will be installed within sight of an RMG display screen, he notes.
Blue Bite's software provides two functions, Trigub says. Not only can it provide the link for the business at which the mTag is located, but it can also track each time data is accessed via a cell phone. In this way, if a user, for example, chose to view download options from Hotels.com, a record of each prompt pressed would be stored in the Blue Bite software, and that information would be provided to the advertiser. According to Trigub, Blue Bite charges a fee to advertisers based on the number of prompts selected by users.
Since many mobile phone manufacturers have announced that they plan to sell NFC-enabled handsets, Blue Bite predicts that the technology's use will become widespread in the coming years. To that end, the firm intends to roll out its NFC-enabled infrastructure for accessing digital media in advance of the new phones' commercial release. "We see NFC as a silver bullet," Trigub states, since it is easier to use than QR bar codes or Bluetooth technology—a user simply taps the back of the phone against a tag—and because NFC readers require less battery power than Bluetooth, a technology that Blue Bite has already been using to provide promotional content to cell phones.
Because the solution has been installed for only about a week, Trigub says his company has not yet gathered any meaningful data regarding the technology's use. But so far, he notes, the QR codes are being used more commonly than the NFC tags—which he says is not surprising, given that so few phones presently offer NFC functionality. Blue Bite is still assessing where best to place mTag stickers within a store, as well as what the best printed design on the mTag is and which content attracts the most consumer interest.
At various cities across the United States, Google is deploying an NFC-enabled service of its own, known as Hotpot (see Google Brings RFID-enabled Hotpot to Portland, Austin). The Hotpot system, which features an NFC tag embedded in a sticker that attaches to the front of a store, is encoded with an ID number that instructs an NFC-enabled phone to display links to Google Web pages that a user can access in order to find information about a business, such as its hours of operation, as well as related photos, videos, coupons, customer ratings and reviews. In contrast, Trigub says, the mTag system is an advertising solution that includes ads from sponsoring companies, as well as coupons and other content that local businesses pay to have delivered to the user's cell phone. The system, Trigub says, "links place-based media [provided by RMG Networks' digital screens] with the mobile phone, and delivers targeted content based on the location and the media content being displayed on their screens."
