Advertising Age's annual digital issue showcases an interactive front cover featuring a mobile 2D bar code, a first for the magazine and its readers.

Each issue offers readers the chance to engage Jagtag mobile 2D bar codes to win free admission to the upcoming Ad Age Digital Conference on April 13-14 in New York. By using a camera phone to take a picture of a Jagtag 2D bar code and send it in, Advertising Age readers are automatically entered into the sweepstakes, with no download or other action required.

?If anybody understands 2D bar codes in the marketplace, it?s Ad Age, which also has an article about 2D bar codes in the issue, and it?s a testament to us to feature us on the cover,? said Dudley Fitzpatrick, founder and chief innovation officer of Jagtag, Princeton, NJ. ?It?s an honor to be selected by one of the industry?s most influential magazines to be on their biggest issue of the year.

?Publishers want to communicate with their audience, they want reach and engagement and they want their consumers to be able to do something instantly without download an app, to get content just by taking and sending a picture,? he said.

?Using 2D bar codes on the cover of Ad Age?s annual digital issue is an opportunity to make a statement right at the beginning as a demonstration of how marketers can transform physical print media into interactive digital media.?

Jagtag can deliver multimedia content to both standard phones and smartphones and it does not require the consumer to download an application prior to use.

Anywhere a mobile consumer encounters a Jagtag, they can use their phone to request and immediately receive multimedia content such as video, audio, pictures, coupons and text sent to their phone.

Jagtag enables publishers and marketers to share sweepstakes, promotions and multimedia with smartphone owners and standard phone owners, the remaining 75 percent of consumers who own phones without mobile Web access.

Jagtags were recently featured in the 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue and in advertisements and marketing materials promoting the issue. Readers who scanned a 2D bar code received videos of the swimsuit models.

Pull mobile sweepstakes
Ad Age decided to integrate 2D bar codes to engage its readers and use the traditional print medium as a launchpad for on-demand digital media.

The magazine added the sweepstakes component as unique way to promote the Advertising Age Digital Conference.

Jagtag manages the sweepstakes administration in partnership with ePrize and will notify the winners directly via their mobile devices.

Advertising Age's Digital Issue looks at the brands doing great work in the digital space and answers the questions marketers wrestle with as they try to tap the potential of all the new tools at their disposal.

Publishers have a tremendous opportunity to use digital technology to engage their audience on all platforms, and since Ad Age's Digital Conference is a forum to bring the Digital Issue to life, a ticket sweepstakes using 2D bar code technology made sense on the cover.

?One of the biggest difference between us and other 2D bar code platforms is the simplicity of how you enter a 2D bar code sweepstakes,? Mr. Fitzpatrick said. ?By sending in the picture of the 2D bar code, it?s an automatic entry?there?s no putting information into WAP site.

?Readers who send in a picture of the bar code are immediately sent back an MMS file that says ?You?ve been entered to win tickets to the 2010 Ad Age Digital Conference,? with information on when the conference is and a Web link,? he said.

?It?s wonderfully branded?a great-looking image comes to your phone about the conference touting what a premium, wonderful show this is.?