Glamour magazine recently embedded a SnapTag on its September cover, resulting in more than 100,000 scans.

The publisher posted the SnapTag – a 2-D barcode that includes a brand’s logo – alongside the cover model of the month, Rinanna. Besides the 100,000 scans, the code also drew 50,000 Facebook likes and 500,000 interactions of some kind, iMedia reports.

SnapTags are not to be confused with the more generic QR codes, the company makes clear, which sees SnapTags as a successor to the first generation of this technology.  Besides a more polished interface, SnapTags also offer more analytics and feedback to the marketer.

Rising Magazine Use

Mobile Action Codes—a category that includes QR codes, Microsoft Tags and 2D barcodes—have become an important advertising tool for magazines, a new Q3 2011 study by Nellymoser, finds.

The QR Code and Tag study said that the use of magazine action codes in the top 100 U.S. monthly magazines grew 476% from January to September 2011 with a significant portion of that growth in advertising. It found that:

• Total number of action codes in magazines grew 476% – from 88 in January to 507 in September

• The percent of ad pages with at least one action code grew – from 3.53% of ad pages in January to 5.76% of ad pages in September

• The average number of action codes per issue grew – from 2.33 codes per issue in Q1 to 4.83 codes per issue in Q3.