Google Adwords Mobile just announced a bunch of new formats. Here are the different versions:

New Line Cinema ran a test on the ad-supported Greystripe mobile game network.

Results are interesting:

Mobile advertising on the Greystripe network led to ignificant increases in awareness of and interest in The Golden Compass” film. The ads were not only highly noticed by the overall audience

“Mobile Ad Awareness increased by +59.7 percentage points — but respondents exposed to the ads also exhibited a 19.3 percentage-point increase in awareness of the film’s title.
Furthermore, ad exposure resulted in a +9.5 percentage-point increase in interest in seeing the film among overall respondents. “

Entire study here 

Not sure what’s going on with Google and QR Codes, but Gawker Media is reporting that…

“Google is working with QVC on a REVOLUTIONARY advanced type of bar code that can be scanned with a mobile phone….

Google has already seen results from a recent test campaign conducted in three markets with jewelry retailer Blue Nile. Each ad contained a QR code and a response tag, and was tested against the same ads without the tags. The code-enhanced ads ended up driving 6.5 times more revenue than the ads without.”

Crazy results! I would love to see if a QR Code banner would work online.

Just found: W3.org now includes QR Codes in the Mobile Web compatibility test:

 ”Entering an address is a pain on a phone? Quite often, indeed, so a couple of alternatives to save you a bit of that pain:

if your phone has a camera and a QR code reader (which you can probably find out on your preferred search engine), you can point your camera’s phone to the following code, and it will open the right page in your browser:”

Businessweek reports about Tesco’s success in mobile advertising:

“The mobile virtual network operator has been trialling a WAP advertising portal since May 2007, which Tesco said has displayed strong month-on-month growth, gaining 300,000 unique visitors in December.

Banner advertising served up on the portal delivered a click-through rate to tailored WAP campaign sites of between three and seven per cent, said Tesco. Brands advertising on the portal included Bee Movie, ITV, Nivea and Teletext.

Tesco said the user-base of the portal has a strong segment of female household budget owners with an average age of 36—a demographic it said is particularly valuable for fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries and cleaning products.”

Crazy stuff happening over in Japan: VoiceQR

VoiceQR is basically a QR Code that talks. The QR Code is able to play sound files that are ….well…amazing 2 seconds long. The VoiceQR is supported by about 10 devices. It might be interesting to see what happens in Japan and if this trend of QR Codes will happen in Europe.

Interesting post over at Branding Unbound:

“Internationally, McDonald’s has long been a mobile marketing pioneer, from mobile coupons to QR codes….in one of its largest tests to date, 113 McDonald’s locations in Utah, Wyoming and Nevada are testing mobile coupons that will enable consumers to receive one of the chain’s new iced coffees for free when they use a Cellfire mobile coupon by April 27, according to BRANDWEEK”

Interesting to see that McDonald’s is not really pushing advertising on the internet, but rather offers mobile coupons. Would be interesting to see why brand marketers often skip the web and rather jump on mobile.

I would assume it has to do with controlling the distribution? Any thoughts?

Pretty crazy stuff: MotionPortrait takes one photo and instantly transforms it into a fully realized 3D model that can be animated, placed into another 3D environment, synced with sound, and programmed to respond to various user input.

Found via Dvice