Updates on the QR Code and NFC Platform for Out-of-Home (OOH) Advertising

This earlier post gives a brief overview of our platform for OOH advertising providers. The platform has become popular with OOH media owners and advertisers because it adds value for all - including the user.

Nearly every campaign today has an online component (LIKE us, register for event, get a coupon, purchase...) and providing an instant, relevant, actionable trigger goes a long way in meeting the objectives of the campaign.

Since launch we have added many features to support the unique workflows of the OOH industry.

A couple of notable ones:

Campaign Scheduler:
A tedious manual process used to be updating the campaigns every week. Usually OOH campaigns are sold on a weekly basis and on the designated day (typically late at night), new posters and material is put up for the up-coming campaigns. This of course required changing the settings for all the QR Codes and NFCs on our platform as well.

The Qryptal system always enabled uploading a spreadsheet with details of the up-coming campaigns. But though the actual physical posters would always need to be changed manually (until it is all digital screens) - it was doubly frustrating to do the re-programming of the NFCs and QR Codes every week.

Now we have added capability that you can upload campaign spreadsheets and schedule them. So if you are running 10 campaigns/week - you can just keep on scheduling as when the clients confirm and not do so on that particular changeover day.

Since the spreadsheets could have an error, we also have dry run processing which emails you incase of any problems are encountered in the data set.

OOH Assets Updater:
Changes to OOH assets happen frequently, particularly in a large network with thousands of assets. We have further streamlined the process of updating the assets so that the campaigns are correctly deployed and the analytics accurate.

We are encouraged by how well our platform is now working for the OOH industry and look forward towards adding more capabilities to serve this industry.

QR Code and NFC Platform for Out-of-Home (OOH) Advertising

This post outlines how the Qryptal Platform is being used in Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising.

First, a brief recap of the Qryptal Platform:

• PCodes: These are serialized QR Codes and pre-programmed NFC tags. Typically customers bulk generate and print them in advance and point them to a placeholder campaign. Later when an actual campaign is deployed, the PCodes are assigned to the desired campaign.
  
  For physical deployment, the operations team has to ensure that the serial numbers on the QR Codes and the NFC tags match up.
  
  The PCodes can be also be linked to a location database. Typically our OOH customers do this because:
• They already have the co-ordinates (latitude, longitude) of their OOH assets
• Linking a PCode to it's location enables OOH relevant analytics

 

• Campaigns: To be of any use, the PCodes have to be pointed to a campaign. These are created on the Qryptal Platform and are primarily of two kinds:
• Redirect Campaigns: Here scanning the PCode would redirect the user to the assigned redirect campaign URL (can be any URL).
  The platform enables creation of sophisticated URL redirects based on many parameters: time, sequence of visit, random, language, geo-lock etc.
  Interesting campaigns can thus be easily created: scan first time and see movie trailer #1, second time see trailer #2 and so on.
• Hosted Campaigns: These campaigns are designed and run on the Qryptal platform itself. These can be for contests, check-ins, feedback, coupons, mobile forms etc.
  Profile creation with mobile number verification can also be incorporated.
  
• Analytics: A summary report and raw logs are provided. Linking the location database enables displaying of a map with #scans at each site (including by type: QR/NFC).

There is a lot more to the system in terms of things you would expect for managing campaigns with hundreds or even thousands of points of presence.