There’s been many attempts by many companies to solve the problems facing mobile barcodes, and the many aspects limiting its mainstream existence, but Neustar has made key progress with its announcement of a Mobile Barcode Clearinghouse service to finally solve interoperability issues with the concept.
During Mobile World Congress, the company debuted its mobile barcode clearinghouse services alongside a unique 2D barcode campaign in cooperation with Visa. With its new clearinghouse services, Neustar aims to provide a method for companies that produce and distribute barcode readers to interoperate with other companies who create barcode campaigns. The link between the two have been missing, and is a primary limiting factor to mobile barcodes seeing mainstream adoption.
This coordinated approach allows each of the participants to benefit from the efforts of the others, including participation from barcode leaders NeoMedia, 3GVision, Mobile Data Systems, and Mobile Discovery, who are all using the Neustar clearinghouse. The clearinghouse is open to other industry players who wish to benefit from the mass market and scale that can be achieved through an open, interoperable approach.
This is a key progress point for mobile barcodes. In the past, when a company wanted to introduce mobile barcodes (or any aspect of which), they basically had to start from the ground up. The result was a fragmented marketplace filled with varying barcode technologies (2D, QR, JagTag, etc.) along with varying barcode readers. In the end, consumers have never been presented with a standardized, easy-to-use mechanism for mobile barcodes. Neustar’s new clearinghouse service is setting the stage to bring this to reality.
“With our Mobile Barcode Clearinghouse, Neustar can provide both campaign managers and Mobile Network Operators with a rich new approach to accessing mobilized content and services,” said Diane Strahan, vice president at Neustar. “Barcodes offer direct response accountability through measurable ROI and enable advertisers to adjust their content based on near real time tracking of each campaign’s performance. For consumers, barcodes offer an exciting ‘shortcut’ to accessing rich content, helpful information and m-commerce.”
