Could the QR code become mainstream in the United States anytime soon?

QR codes, sometimes called URL killers, are 2D bar codes that contain data. In order to read a QR code, a mobile phone user simply launches a reader on their device and takes a picture of the image. The software then triggers the appropriate response, which can include launching a URL in the phone’s browser or streaming a video or MP3.

So far, QR codes have mainly only been popular in Asia, but a slew of new activity could bring them to the forefront in the United States.

AdvertisingAge recently reported that the following are taking advantage of QR codes:

• “9″: The new film, produced by Tim Burton, will use QR codes as a promotional device. Anyone who has a QR reader on their mobile device will be able to scan the code for exclusive clips from the movie and commentary from the director.
• Green Day: In order to promote “21st Century Breakdown,” the band’s newest album, Green Day put QR codes in magazine ads, posters and stickers. Through Delivr, the codes direct users to a special mobile site where they can download exclusive images and videos.
• YouTube: The video site now allows you to generate a QR code that embeds a link to the video when you visit YouTube through an iPhone or Android phone.
• Firefox: Mozilla recently created Mobile Barcoder, an add-on for the Firefox browser that allows users to generate a QR code of a URL or selection of text in order to easily transfer it to a mobile device.
• Louis Vuitton, Takashi Murakami for Marc Jacobs: SET, which is based in Tokyo, is using QR codes to promote the designs of these companies.

These aren’t the first QR code campaigns to take place in America. Last year, Citysearch created a pilot program in San Francisco that allowed users to get restaurant reviews from stickers placed in the windows of participating establishments. Other advertisers, such as Pepsi, Siemens and Volvo, also have create QR campaigns.

We’re a bit late in recognizing this, but much love goes out to Sarah White, Chief Strategy Officer with HRMDirect, for her recent blog post outlining May’s Kennedy Conference. In it, she talks about our presentation on mobile recruiting:

By far the best session of the event was Joel Cheesman’s breakout session on mobile recruiting. Not because it was particularly showy, but because I appreciate the laid back presentation style and loved the topic.

She went on to proclaim, “I can see a day where there really are no longer job boards - peoples matching jobs are simply texted/messaged to their phones instead of the e-mail and they can automatically submit their interest - no online job search needed. I can see marketing and recruiting in consumer product organizations finally actually getting together on something instead of just talking about it.”

She then pimped our white paper. We love Sarah. A lot. ‘Specially ’cause we weren’t hugged much as kids.

Checkout contractor Gary Fountaine chattin’ up mJob at an event in San Francisco.

Last month, SAP unveiled a new mobile marketing campaign, along with related online and print ads.

As part of the campaign, the company used an ad network to seed banner display ads on the mobile version of 11 different IT and business technology sites, including CBS, Gizmodo and CNN. Users can click on the display ads and connect to an SAP site that hosts five different short videos. Those videos focus on the connection between clarity and successful business and are hosted by such notable people as Accenture’s Royce Bell and James Surowiecki, a writer for The New Yorker.

The company began using mobile marketing in an attempt to reach its target audience of C-level executives and senior business decision makers. Although this particular campaign is too new to have quantifiable results, OgilvyOne found that mobile banner ads have a 2 percent click-through rate, compared to Internet banner ads, which have a .15 percent click-through rate.

As mobile usage in general continues to grow, it’s likely that more advertisers will jump on the mobile bandwagon. Currently, 11 percent of the country’s 267 million mobile phone users own Internet-ready smartphones. Even big companies like Buick, Kraft and Wal-Mart have begun building mobile-ready Web sites.

Other viable mobile marketing options for advertisers include text messaging and Quick Response Codes. M:Metrics has reported that 49 percent of mobile phone users in America actively use text messaging, making it a convenient way to reach a target audience.

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that, when scanned by a phone, connect you to a specific URL. This option is more popular in Japan, where QR codes have been used since the mid-90s and come preloaded on mobile phones.

Mobile TV seems to be catching on in America, and that could mean new avenues for advertisers.

Strategy Analytics predicts the mobile TV broadcasting market will increase by 50 percent this year, from $200 million last year. Some big name brands, such as Ford and Microsoft, are already buying commercial spots within mobile network content.

Until recently, mobile TV wasn’t that popular in the United States. South Korea led development and now half of that country’s 45 million cellphone users watch mobile television. Japan and Hong Kong have grown fond of it as well.

In hopes the American audience will soon grow, broadcasters and technology companies have created Mobile Digital TV, a technical standard for transmitting video to portable devices. That will be tested later this month in Washington, D.C.

MobiTV, a California-based company that provides subscription-based content across 20 mobile networks, already has 7 million subscribers and has seen a 600 percent growth rate during the last three years. Flo TV, Qualcomm’s mobile TV service, is planning to expand to 100 major U.S. cities.

According to a report from Transpera, the largest mobile video ad-network in the country, more than 13 million Americans watched TV on their mobile phones during Q1. This is a 52 percent increase from the same time last year.

This means mobile TV advertising could soon start to grow. Several TV networks are hoping that will be the case, as a total of $1.5 billion in ad revenue was brought in during Q1, a decrease of about 11 percent from the $12 billion brought in during the same time last year, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

During the last few years, there has been a migration from the television to the Web, and now it seems to the mobile phone. CBS, ESPN, MTV and Disney have all launched programming made specifically for phones. These include live broadcasts that show the same commercials that are seen on TV and on-demand videos with ads already chosen.

An example of mobile TV’s success is the Rachel Maddow iPhone app from MSNBC. That app, which allows viewers to watch a three- to five-minute segment of the show or the whole episode on their iPhone, BlackBerry or Palm Pre, brought in $750,000 during June. Another example is the 1 million people that watched the recent Michael Jackson memorial from their phones.

In an attempt to focus more on mobile users, Facebook is teaming up with DeviceAnywhere to ensure its mobile applications are optimized for specific handsets.

DeviceAnywhere is an SaaS platform that allows application developers and device manufacturers to test software on a variety of handsets from more than 30 mobile operators throughout the world.

Facebook has already had some success with its mobile applications, as the iPhone Facebook app is often on the App Store’s most-downloaded list. Now Facebook is hoping to have that kind of luck with other smartphones.

“Although many companies offer mobile sites or applications for their consumers on-the-go, Facebook is taking it a step further by developing multiple applications that are customized to a user’s device,” DeviceAnywhere CEO Faraz Syed said. “Not only does this require testing an enormous amount of handsets, but also on carriers and networks on a global scale.”

Almost 20 million users access MySpace through a cellphone, causing the company to look at the mobile market as a strong growth avenue that could be monetized with relevant ads. However, neither Facebook nor MySpace have been able to significantly monetize its mobile users. The fact that neither company has strong location integration - a strong facet for other mobile social networks like Loopt, Brightkite and MocoSpace - could be the reason why.

BuzzCity recently released a mobile advertising campaign planner for users of the company’s Global Mobile Advertising Network.

The tool, which is the first of its kind, allows marketers and brands to better plan their mobile advertising campaigns by providing information on traffic and demographic data from each of the 200 countries included in the BuzzCity network.

The Campaign Planner has an easy-to-use interface and provides key data that will help companies receive maximum results from their advertising spend. Media planners, researchers and strategists can use the tool to implement a strategy for a successful mobile advertising and marketing campaign.

The Campaign Planner includes a map display, which is colored to note the mobile Internet advertising page views available in markets throughout the world. Darker colored countries have more inventory compared to lighter colored countries, which helps advertisers identify where they should advertise.

When users roll over each country with their cursor, a pop-up window displays the number of ad impressions available per month and the average cost-per-click recorded for that market. Other information available through the tool includes carrier and network information; handset information, including brand, model, operating system and features; and user information, including gender, age and location.

“Each of the millions of ad impressions served across our network daily tell us a little more about the mobile internet landscape,” BuzzCity CEO KF Lai, BuzzCity said. “The data accrued is a trove of valuable insight for advertisers and media planners, and also paints a coherent picture of mobile internet trends - what markets are expanding, who is engaging and the types of handsets they are using to surf.

“BuzzCity’s advertisers are now able to do away with much of the trial-and-error of planning, and can establish effective campaign metrics upfront,” Laid continued. “There is no other advertising network that provides this amount of data, enabling marketers to better set goals based on their target markets, optimize their campaigns, continue to adjust performance to achieve the best click through rates, and ultimately achieve the best conversion and customer acquisition rates.”

The BuzzCity Global Mobile Advertising Network provides global wireless communities and consumer services. It is one of the largest mobile Internet advertising networks and includes more than 2,000 mobile Internet publisher sites in 200 countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, along with the company’s myGamma mobile social networking community.

T-Mobile is planning to release the myTouch 3G, its second Android-powered phone, this August.

This time around, the phone will have a strong emphasis on personalization. The handset is based on the touchscreen HTC Magic, but T-Mobile has added several hardware and software changes. The phone will be available with multiple shell cases with different designs.

The phone will have a Microsoft Exchange client that will allow users to receive corporate e-mail and calenders while on the go. The phone also will come preloaded with the Sherpa application, a location-based program that customizes itself to the user’s preferences and recommends nearby shops, restaurants and other locations.

The myTouch 3G also will come with an App pack that will give users recommendations for other programs in the Android market.

The touch-screen handset is powered by Android 1.5, which includes an onscreen keyboard and video-recording capabilities. The phone has integrated Wi-Fi and EDGE and can use T-Mobile’s 3G network. The phone also has Bluetooth and GPS, as well as integration with Google’s Web services, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps and YouTube.

The myTouch 3G will be available for $199 with a two-year contract, putting it in direct competition with AT&T’s iPhone 3GS.