Bar codes let marketers connect the digital world to the physical realm and even create product merchandising opportunities for brands and retailers.  

Microsoft claims that 1 billion Tags have been printed in the past four months, bringing the total to 2 billion Tags printed since its January 2009 launch. The number of new Tag users per month increased by three fold in the first quarter since emerging from beta in May. The number of Tags scanned per month increased by four fold during the same time period.

?This release was about our momentum since beta,? said Aaron Getz, general manager at Microsoft Tag, Redmond, WA.  ?What?s been clear is how interesting the scenarios are to businesses and what is holding it back is how mainstream it is.

?We are seeing the typical chicken and egg problem,? he said. ?Companies don?t want to use Tags unless they are sure that consumers are open to using and interacting with them, but you can?t possibly know this unless you use bar codes to test it out.?

To date, more than 100,000 Tag accounts have been set up to add interactive digital experiences to brand advertising and marketing campaigns.

Since August, Tag has been used in more than 100 million magazine issues.

In the largest known bar code campaign to date, Allure had 450,000 scans, using Microsoft Tag for its annual Free Stuff Giveaway issue in August.

Why the growth?
Consumers are rapidly embracing smartphones, which opens a new marketing channel for savvy businesses.

Microsoft Tag gives brands and their agencies a powerful way to engage this growing set of connected consumers and create immersive experiences that connect the digital world to the physical world.

With Tag, businesses can build compelling customer scenarios to drive engagement and retention, easily measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and explore new merchandising opportunities for their products.

Who?s using Tag?
A broad range of brands across a wide variety of industries have deployed Tag, including Canon Inc., HMS Host Corp., Jones Apparel Group Inc., Kellogg Co., Kraft Foods Inc., Proctor & Gamble, Razor USA, Simmons Bedding Company, Simon & Schuster Inc. and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.

Brands and their agencies have leveraged Tag across their online, print, outdoor, retail and broadcast efforts to engage consumers with a range of digital content.

Publishing in particular has experienced great success with a wide variety of Tag uses in many different editorial and advertising scenarios.

Nellymoser Inc., a provider of interactive video and rich media marketing campaigns to mobile phone users, recently conducted a study of how magazine editors, publishers and advertisers have adopted 2D bar codes.

The study, to be released in early November, found that Microsoft Tags were used more than 80 percent of the time in more than 100 magazines that contained 2D bar code campaigns in advertising or editorial content.

?The idea behind tag is to add a digital experience to things that already exist in the digital world,? Mr. Getz said. ?Offline advertising is still fantastic at getting people?s attention but are limited in terms of what to do once you get their attention.

?Tags break through the limitations of offline media,? he said. ?They can be used in many different ways whatever the scenario is.?

Use cases
Microsoft Tag worked with a company that sells humidifiers. The company added a Tag to the actual product, that when scanned, brings consumers to a page where they can buy a new filter for the product.

Another campaign ran on Xbox Live and consumers could scan to buy movie tickets.

?Tags help take someone all the way through the funnel,? Mr. Getz said. ?I mean, someone is not going to buy a car from a bar code, for automotive companies the use case would be different.?
For example, Ford uses the codes to get people to schedule test drives.

Mr. Getz said that for a lot of brands, the reason behind using a Tag is to be able to add a video to offline.

Razor Scooters used Tags on its packages to get consumers to watch a video of a someone doing tricks on a scooter.

IKEA used Tags in its catalog to connect people to a slideshow of kitchen designs.

?People are not going to scan the first Tag they see,? Mr. Getz said. ?Repeat Tags and have them throughout for a Tag-rich environment.

?If you have a magazine that uses just one Tag, that Tag will perform worse than if there were more throughout the magazine,? he said.