Mobile ad tech company Tapped Mobile and mobile solutions provider MobileXCo have teamed up to launch a Shazamable mobile coupon.
According to Tapped Mobile, Shazam’s exclusive Canadian partner, the Shazam app has more than 15 million downloads in Canada, and 3.5 million Canadians use Shazam every month. The app is best known for its music-identification capabilities: it recognizes songs and sends information such as the artist and song title back to the user.
Earlier this year, Shazam launched new visual recognition technology, which allows users to wave their mobile devices over specially marked printed materials, such as magazine ads, posters or product packaging, to access dynamic content from advertisers.
Now, advertisers can create custom “Shazam Offers” for consumers, who can access the coupons on their mobile devices by opening the app, tapping the camera icon and holding their devices over anything enabled with Visual Shazam, such as a printed item, radio spot or TV ad.
The new mobile coupon offering will “help consumers with in-store shopping and help brands drive better ROI and measurability with their coupon programs,” said Jed Schneiderman, president of Tapped Mobile.
Since many Canadians are already using the Shazam app, and mobile coupon usage is on the rise, “the idea of combining those two things made a ton of sense,” said Schneiderman.
According to Tapped Mobile’s Mobile Persona study, 39% of mobile moms (25-54, with kids at home under 18) download coupons onto their phones; and 40% of millennials use coupons on their phones, up from 17% last year. In addition, between 64-72% of consumers access digital flyers on their phones and 40-45% of consumers search for grocery coupons while in store.
Advertisers will have access to real-time reporting and analytics including coupon requests and redemption by media channel, as well as performance by retail location. The measurement tools will give brands “a much better picture of what the customer journey looks like,” said Schneiderman.
For example, “if a consumer Shazams a brand’s radio spot, pulls up the coupon and redeems it in store, not only [is the advertiser] seeing where the redemption happened, but they’re actually connecting it to the media spend.”
The plus side for retailers is there’s no hardware required. Tapped Mobile will use MobileXCo’s proprietary offer verification and redemption process, which eliminates the need for special equipment at the point-of-sale.
