Interactive barcodes in newspaper ads

This article is about interactive barcodes.

There is a new offering from google that allows you to purchase advertisements with special barcodes.  These barcodes have to be decoded and the message will give you a website address.  This form of advertisement has already taken off in Japan.

To decode these barcodes, you will have to have a decoding software that allows you to see the hidden message.  This will help advertisers measure response to their ads.  Right now the software is only on about 1% of phones, but in the future more phones will have this feature.  Right now this method will not be utilized until it is further developed.