Scannable Retail Stickers to Extend Google’s Local Presence
Google plans on mailing around 100,000 window stickers to restaurants, hotels, bars, and other retail entities around the nation during the next two weeks. Each sticker will have a unique scannable barcode that is designed to work with numerous popular mobile phones and help local businesses target on-the-go consumers with promotions such as coupons.
From the user perspective, the phones will need to include a camera feature and have an app that scans barcodes, according to an announcement by the Mountain View, CA-based online giant earlier today. The initiative builds on the brand’s “Favorite Places” program for Google Maps that started last summer, while beginning its first outreach to local businesses in an effort that’s expected to continue into 2010.
A spokesperson for the search site explained the local businesses for this initial run were selected due to having an established account in Google’s “Local Business Center” and producing a high number of clicks on their Google.com and Google Maps listings. Site stats were included in the literature that accompanied the decal-styled stickers, said the spokesperson, as well as “ideas for how to use the ‘Local Business Center’ as a daily tool for running their business, and an overview of why the sticker could be useful to them, and how their potential customers could use them.”





Wonder if this means that we’ll have to start paying sales tax on Google purchases? Will NY determine that this gives Google a local presence in NY like Amazon’s affiliate program does.
The possibilities with this technology are extraordinary. QR codes, blots, and barcodes are the future of Advertising and Search via GPS.
I am so glad to see this technology come to America. We have been behind the curveball for years when it comes to mobile payments, mobile marketing and Point-of-Interest (POI) Marketing (aka GPS Marketing). I’d like to see some sort of integration with social platforms such as brightkite, foursquare, etc…maybe even twitter…where you could scan it as you walk through the door and let your network know where you are / slash provide ad revenue for the establishment and social platform.
Good post Andrew. Quickly becoming a fan of your new blog.
Jay Lohmann
DomainDevelopmentFirm.com
Uh. No. Absolutely not. Google already knows way, way too much about me. Sorry.