QR Codes Most Popular with Marketers

73% of barcodes in Q4 2011 were 2D codes, with ID codes accounting for the remaining 27%. Although current use of 2D barcodes by 100 independent marketers that ScanLife surveyed stands at 50%, 86% of those marketers said they plan to use 2D barcodes in the future.

61% of the marketers surveyed report using open source code formats, with QR codes the most popular. The top 3 media placement choices include magazines and newspapers, direct mail, and product packaging.

These findings align with results from a comScore MobiLens study released in August 2011 that examined QR code usage in June 2011. According to that study, among mobile users who had scanned a QR code, the most popular source was a printed magazine or newspaper, with nearly half scanning QR codes from this source. Product packaging was the source of QR code scanning for 35.3% of the audience, while 27.4% scanned a code from a website on a PC and 23.5% scanned codes from a poster/flyer/kiosk.