Report: NFC, QR codes will drive proximity marketing to $2.3 billion in 2016
13 April, 2012
category: NFC
New market research from Smiths Point Analytics projects that the global market for action oriented proximity based marketing services – i.e. NFC/QR-enabled ads – is expected to reach $2.3 billion by 2016.
By SPA’s definition, action oriented proximity based marketing services enable brands to interact with consumers based on their proximity to a particular physical location or object. Action oriented services also require consumers to perform some sort of action such as scanning a bar code or tapping an NFC tag to launch a web experience or access content.
According to the report, this market is well established in Japan, but is just gaining momentum around the globe. Accordingly, SPA predicts that $1.5 billion of the $2.3 billion projected for 2016 will be generated outside of Japan.
Driving this growth is the investment of major mobile commerce players such as Google, as well as increased awareness of standard QR codes from consumers, according to the report.
This proximity market growth will result in a “gamification” of the world, in which people will increasingly interact with their daily surroundings, e.g. smart posters, print ads, point of sale terminals, product packaging, etc. via mobile phone, according to the report. However, before this global gamification can occur, SPA warns that the web experience associated with QR codes needs to improve.
“While it is easy to create a QR code, the resulting Web experience is much more difficult, often leading to poor experiences for users, discouraging repeat usage,” SPA said in a summary of the report.
In the meantime, the low cost of QR codes is making it easy for businesses to launch campaigns, flooding the market with QR codes and increasing recognition and scanning by mobile users. Thus, the ease of creating QR codes and its standardization will allow the technology to dominate the market, according to the report.
“Action Oriented Proximity Marketing Technologies & Platforms: Blending the Online and Offline Marketing Channel With NFC & Barcodes” is now available on Reportlinker.com.