Month: September 2022

Tracking of QR Codes in TV Advertising

Joseph Gray AdSphere

Over the past year, there’s been a lot of industry buzz around the use of QR codes in direct-to-consumer and direct response advertising.

Thanks to Covid-19, the use of QR codes was popularized by the restaurant industry for accessing menus. This has helped to create mass consumer awareness of QR codes and how they work. Both iPhone and Android devices have integrated QR code readers into their native camera apps further popularizing the use of QR codes.

The rich data that can be included within the QR code can serve many purposes including tracking which TV network and specific creatives consumers are responding to. QR codes are great for tracking digital activity and also provide advertisers with a novel way to engage consumers. Over the years, there have been far less elegant solutions used such as visible codes appended at the beginning or the end of a URL. Examples include: www.brand.com/TV1, www.brand.com/TV2, 1brand.com, 2brand.com, etc. Advertisers using this approach have struggled with various problems. For example, consumers would often ignore the appended codes. Also, many advertisers feel that messing with the visible URL dilutes brand awareness. In comparison with such approaches, the QR code is arguably a more elegant and versatile solution.

The team at DRMetrix has been working to be able to detect when QR codes are used in television ads and to be able to extract and report the data contained within the QR code at the airing level. This supports the use of differing QR codes running on the same network / creative where additional segmentation is required.

We are excited to announce that this capability has been integrated into DRMetrix’s Airing Verification Service (AVS) system. A new “QR Code” field can be enabled in any AVS output or pulled via API.

DRMetrix has also added a new response type filter for “QR Code” in AdSphere which will allow subscribers to better understand the use cases and growth of QR codes. At the time of this writing, 374 creatives using QR codes have been identified across the 140+ networks monitored by DRMetrix. To provide some context, that is roughly 2% of traditional direct response airings including long form 28.5m infomercials.

For more information on our new QR Code filter in AdSphere, please click here.



September 2022 – Build

Joseph Gray AdSphere

Today we released a new build of AdSphere that includes a new response filter “No Response” under which we will include creatives for certain DTC brands that may have dropped use of a dot com address in their creatives. Think of dot com brands that have become household names such as Chewy, Amazon, Geico, Instacart, Wayfair and many others. Eventually these brands are able to drive online traffic without having to include a web address in their TV commercials.

By default, such creatives will be included in AdSphere despite not having a visible web address thanks to the new “No Response” filter type as shown below.

This will primarily impact campaigns with the brand classification of “brand/DR”. One can remove these types of creatives, and associated units and spend, by toggling response type to “At Least” and unchecking “No Response”. Or, if you want to checkout all of the new creatives in the system that meet the criteria of “No Response” change the response type selector to ONLY and only select “No Response”.

As a new build, we’re on the lookout for any issues/problems! Should you encounter any, please email support@drmetrix.com