Thinaire has partnered with Verizon Terremark Cloud to support the growing interest from major brands and retailers to leverage near-field communication for mobile marketing engagements.

NFC enables smartphone owners to engage with brands by simply waving their phone over content such as a poster or in-store sign. With the number of NFC-enabled marketing programs growing, Thinaire is leveraging the global presence of Verizon?s Terremark Cloud to deliver NFC-powered shopping marketing programs on a greater scale than was previously possible.

?When we look at how this works for retailers and brands and advertisers, we look at very large numbers of engagements at a very large scale that need to have a considerable amount of flexibility to them - that is not simple to do,? said Mark Donovan, chief operating officer of Thinaire, New York.

?Aligning with Terremark and Verizon gives us enormous capacity to serve clients at a very, very large scale, which is our focus,? he said.

?As we look out at the remainder of 2013 and particularly into 2014, the uptake in the use of the technology is going to be quite steep, and it is going to be all about the ability to serve up that kind of scale.?

Unique engagements
NFC originated as a technology for enabling mobile payments, but while consumer and retailer adoption is moving slowly, and it still unclear if NFC or some other technology will be the winner in terms of enabling payments, there is still interest in leveraging NFC to enable brands to engage with users because of the benefits it provides over other available solutions.

NFC promises marketers several benefits, including that the technology is built into phones, meaning there is no need for users to download an application such as they have to do with 2D bar codes.

Additionally, NFC is a worldwide standard, simplifying use for both consumers and brands.

The technology is also a secure way of communicating since it was developed for payments, and because it is proximity based, any interaction is intentional.

Finally, NFC engagements are unique, opening up opportunities for marketers to understand the way that consumers interact with the information they are delivering.

?With a RFID tag that is affixed to a poster on a bus shelter or a shoe at Macy?s, I can now effectively measure my engagement against that specific poster and measure the return on investment on that specific poster,? Mr. Donovan said. ?It goes from being very general to being very specific.?

Growing interest
One of the challenges with NFC has been the limited number of phones with the technology embedded in them that are in the hands of consumers.

However, that is beginning to change with many new smartphones being NFC enabled. One obvious exception is the iPhone, as Apple has not committed to NFC technology yet.

Thinaire reports a significant uptick in the past year in the number of big brands interested in leveraging NFC for marketing purposes. This includes major CPG brands such as Kraft, Mondelez, Procter & Gamble and Unilever as well as department stores and apparel manufacturers.

For example, News America Marketing and Thinaire have a program in place with 52,000 retailer franchises enabling shoppers to access brand information directly from the shelf to their mobile device.

Transformative use cases
With expected growth in NFC in mind, Thinaire is partnering with Verizon Terremark Cloud to scale up its NFC-enabled programs based upon traffic, need and demand.

Verizon Terremark provides large companies and government agencies with cloud-based IT infrastructure solutions through a network of over 50 data centers around the world, including a dedicated cloud infrastructure in San Paulo, Brazil. Verizon Terremark is also positioned to serve emerging markets such as Latin America.

?The use case for NFC that we think is the most compelling is consumer engagement and shopper marketing, and marketing in general,? Mr. Donovan said.

?We now have the ability, because the chip set is in the phone to engage with everything around us,? he said. ?Anything that we can embed an RFID tag into can now become a bidirectional, compelling digital marketing channel.

?The use cases for that are vast and transformative for most of the businesses that would apply the technology within their ecosystem.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York