Magazines get Mobilized

AdAge recently published a story about how the push to make magazine pages more interactive "is building mass and, dare we say it, even real momentum as major publishers and advertisers adopt a pair of technologies centered on the cellphone." SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution is one of the two technologies featured in the article.

Snipped from the AdAge report:

Magazines including Rodale's Men's Health and Wenner Media's Rolling Stone are pushing ahead with SnapTell, which allows readers to take camera-phone photos of ads, send in the shots and receive whatever message a marketer has arranged.

Rolling Stone has completed one go-round with SnapTell and plans another for the fall, said Publisher Ray Chelstowski. Readers responded strongly to the ads, he said, citing one from the Discovery Channel promoting the season premiere of "Man Vs. Wild."

"You got a video back of the host of that show drinking animal blood," Mr. Chelstowski said. "That one really resonated."

"If this does take hold," he added, "what it really does is narrow that transactional gap for advertisers that takes you from not only print media to mobile but to actual transactions."

John Hadl, general manager at Brand in Hand, said he's used both technologies -- and thinks they're here to stay. "The value of digital is that it's a productive medium," Mr. Hadl said. "Mobile starts to bring that to other channels that have been one-dimensional, like print."

If readers continue to respond well, digital technology may be poised to support traditional ad sales more directly than ever.