HEADLINE NEWS
U.S.: NFC-Enabled Magazine Print Ad Lets Users ‘Test Drive’ Dashboard App Service
A print advertisement for the 2013 Lexus GS luxury car in Wired magazine’s April edition sent to subscribers in several major metropolitan areas of the U.S. came with NFC labels attached. Subscribers with NFC phones could tap the tags to launch a mobile website on their phones. There, they could “test drive” the new Lexus Enform with Safety Connect, Lexus’ in-car navigation and app service. The tags store a URL for the site.
Tech magazine Wired sees itself as an innovative publisher, which is why it has run the largest print ad project to date using NFC tags–though there has been at least one other placed in 20,000 copies of a French magazine in 2009. Organizers of the Wired project have declined to say how much the tags cost, but in very low quantities, they run $.50 to $1 apiece. The NFC tag technology competes with much-cheaper QR or 2-D bar codes that can be printed right on the page, not attached with labels as NFC tags are. Bar codes also are available to many more users, who need only a phone with a camera and a QR-code-reading app. But for people with NFC devices, NFC tags are easier to use, potentially more secure and carry more cachet for publishers and consumer brands. Quad/Graphics, the printer of Wired magazine, told NFC Times it’s receiving interest for NFC-enabled ads in other brand categories, such as clothing and for retail coupon circulars.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
Last update: April 2012
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