Making use of Japan's passion for high-tech mobile telephones, a company is testing a way to let people download video advertisements by snapping photos of related pages from a printed magazine.
Rakuten Inc, Japan's largest online shopping mall operator, is trying out the technology by handing out to subscribers thousands of pilot issues of a magazine, Zero90, aimed at fashion-conscious young people.
By taking pictures of specific articles in the magazine, now circulating, readers will receive promotional videos on their mobile telephones. The vast majority of Japanese carry mobile phones of third-generation (3G) capacity or higher and more than one in four Japanese watches videos on their cellphones each day, according to a study by the MMD research institute.
Rakuten said in a statement last week it would also find other ways to use the data-reading technology, which was developed with the Japanese firm Clementec. "This system provides a new, value-added advertising model for print media," it said.
Advertisements on mobile phones in Japan are set to triple by 2011, outpacing growth in Internet advertising and compensating for slowing growth in print media, Japan's largest advertising company Dentsu said in April.