Valpak, the print and online coupon company owned by Cox Enterprises, is prepping for its latest innovation: envelopes that can carry embedded augmented reality code.

The company is in final negotiations with a national advertiser and plans to launch the campaign by the end of February or beginning of March, Jim Buckley, head of Valpak's New Media Business tells MarketingVOX.

The company has been avidly following developments with this technology in the marketing space - including the recent Adidas' announcement that it would embed AR technology in a new line of shoes as part of a marketing campaign.

"It is something very much on our radar," says Buckley.

Larger Campaign

The AR campaign is a piece of a larger new media initiative on the part of Valpak. Among other changes, Valpak.com has been optimized for mobile phones.

The company  released an iPhone app and partnered with other Cox Enterprises subsidiaries such as Kudzu.com - a relationship that allows consumers searching for savings on the Valpak.com site to view customer reviews and ratings of many local service providers.

It also began focusing more on promoting its coupons on social media sites, as well implementing such simple measures as adding a printable version of the coupons running in the ubiquitous blue envelopes.

200% Increase

Since November, when Valpak partnered with Kudzu and began offering online printable coupons, its print numbers have doubled, Buckley says. "On any given day the number of prints was up by 200%." Unique visitors to the site, year over year, was up 40%, he adds. "We can point just to those two factors as having a significant increase in our traffic."