A new print advertising technology, which promotes interactivity with ads and introduces a potential direct marketing component to space ads, debuted yesterday in Wired magazine.
The July issue of Wired contains 30 space ads, which have an embedded digital watermark that–when filmed on a PC camera–deliver the viewer directly to the advertiser’s Web page. Portland, OR-based Digimarc Corp. gave away 25,000 PC cameras to Wired subscribers and others. These “Digimarc households” will be surveyed about their use of the technology.
The goal of advertisers in that issue, which include Chrysler, Compuware, Delta, Merrill Lynch, Panasonic and Visa, is to deliver readers to their Web sites. “Sixty-two percent of visits to Web sites are driven by print media,” said Ken Crawford, account manager at Digimarc, New York, which invented the digital watermark technology. “This makes print interactive.”
Once the consumer is on the Web site, the advertiser may attempt to sell a product, gather information about the consumer for future promotions, or merely take note of the fact that the consumer is there. When shot by the PC camera, the digital watermark allows Digimarc to find out what ad was viewed and what publication it came from.
Wired has licensed the technology, called Digimarc MediaBridge, to use either in editorial or advertising copy. Wired sent subscribers a letter about the technology that it polybagged with the July issue. Time Inc., Hearst, Primedia (which publishes DIRECT and Direct Newsline) are among the publishing companies that have also licensed the technology.
Digimarc has a branch that provides digital watermarks for passports and drivers’ licenses. The technology has vast data-gathering possibilities, company executives said, but so far advertisers have requested only that non-personally identifiable information be gathered.
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