By Roger Matus, Executive Vice President, Ann Carver, Analyst and Maria Tricca, Marketing Manager, Nellymoser, Inc.

The market for mobile action codes in the top 100 U.S. magazines continued to grow in Q1 2012.  Mobile action codes include all 2D barcodes, QR codes, Microsoft Tags, SnapTags and digital watermarks.

Every magazine title in our survey, except for one, contained at least one mobile action code during the period. More than 450 brands ran at least one advertisement during Q1 that included a code.

As the chart below shows, 1365 codes were printed in Q1 2012 versus 352 during the same period last year. The rate of increase from January to March was also greater in 2012 than 2011. If the trend continues, the overall adoption of mobile action codes will grow at an even faster rate during the year.

Action codes are popular with publishers and advertisers because they offer a compelling way to activate print with mobile and social content that engages readers, builds brand loyalty and captures new business.

To understand how QR codes are being used in magazine advertising, Nellymoser surveyed the top 100 U.S. magazines by circulation. This study includes all issues dated during Q1 2012 as well as information from previous Nellymoser studies of magazines published in 2011.

The study is limited to national titles readily available on newsstands. This eliminated regional publications and any that require a membership, such as AARP The Magazine. For the purposes of this study, we refer to this list as the Top 100 magazines.

To compile the data, Nellymoser counted and analyzed every page in the Top 100 magazines. We analyzed 38,719 pages in Q1, including 15,691 advertising pages.

Nellymoser scanned every QR code, Microsoft Tag, SpyderLynk SnapTag, Digimarc watermark and all other codes with an iPhone or Android phone. We activated every campaign, ran every video and visited every web page.