It is increasingly common for magazines to adopt QR codes, or similar like Microsoft tags, in their different communication actions and advertising campaigns with their readers. In the US, more than 2200 codes were included in the top 100 publications in the second quarter of 2012, with a 61% growth over the first quarter of the year. This figure also represents more than 107% increase over the same period of 2011.

According to the company Nellymoser, it seems that there is more than enough reasons for it.

Nellymoser has analyzed, for 12 consecutive months, 7 publications that use its Companion App solution to work with activation codes. The company has found that the response level is between 4.5 and 5.9%, and that the time visitors stay with the application open in 10 minutes on average.

The average response rate, taking into account the distribution and eliminating the minimi and maximum markers, was 6.4%

In addition to the high level of response, the actionable codes have proved to be tools that facilitate a high interaction with the reader. During the average 10 minutes in which the application was open, visitors accessed an average of 19 pages, but with notable differences between headers, from 2.6 to 62.9 pages.

Another significant measure of the level of interaction with the publication is the number of visits per user, but in this case there has been a greater parity between publications. After an initial visit to the app, visitors returned an average of 1.4 additional times, averaging 2.4 times. The range of visits was between 2.1 and 9.

The report identified several factors that influenced the level of response. Among them, the most important has been the number of scannable codes, with a greater number of codes increasing opportunities to increase visibility. Also influenced in the results were the rewards and rewards for performing these scans, with discounts, sweepstakes and coupons as the main motivation.

Although the study base is not very broad and sufficient to draw definitive conclusions, since it was limited to only 7 titles and had used the Companion App software of the company, the results seem to suggest the convenience of a greater use of codes by part of the publishers.