Ad technologies these days revolve around brands making the jump from intrusion to permission by being invited onto your most personal of computers, your smartphone. The barrier here is your own laziness: how do marketers get you to “pick up their flyer”?

The SoLoMo podcast‘s Cory O’Brien tipped me off to the crazy things Shazam had planned for the big game.

Almost half of the Super Bowl TV advertisers will be Shazam-enabled with several Fortune 100 brands choosing Shazam to add interactivity to their ads or sponsor key game elements. When people use Shazam to tag ads from the following brands, they will unlock exciting offers and content.

How is interactivity being “added” by the Shazam app? The process is called “audio tagging” and it’s extremely similar to QR code functionality, but it uses aural cues—sounds your phone can hear—instead of a physical barcode your phone can read visually.

Mindblowing enough, but to my mind Shazam’s audio tags still present the same challenges QR codes: they need the user to

• download and activate software
• understand what to do & when to do it (requiring visual cues, explanations, etc)
• platform restrictions (operating system, phone quality, signal clarity & other compatibility issues)

If QR codes had’ve caught on with anyone but marketers, mobile tagging may have settled down to a commonplace activity, like it was in Japan in the last decade.

Instead, innovation is pushing past the phone’s eyes and taking advantage of its ears.

The burgeoning audi tag space—potentially a huge component in social tv—isn’t owned by Shazam. An app called SonicNotify can generate machine-audible tones to deliver second-screen content at concerts, in stores and anywhere your phone might be.

SonicNotify works both with software—your iPhone can be the sound-generator at an event—or with physical beacons that make noise until their batteries die (think “beacon taped to a light standard guerilla-style”).

The nifty—or terrifying—or annoying—thing about SonicNotify is that you don’t have to launch an app to receive content. As long as the SonicNotify SDK is built into an app that’s running in the background or loaded from a previous run, content comes through.

“Content”, much like with QR codes, means anything your phone can do—dial a number, visit a web page, receive a text message, activate GPS, play a video. There’s a lot of creative potential there, for marketers and probably more nefarious persons.

On the bright side, this technology overcomes the user confusion-apathy-and-laziness issues of QR codes AND the short range, hardware-dependant issues of RFID. The only smoother delivery I can imagine is if the software were integrated directly into the phone’s OS (long a fantasy for QR code readers embedded in phone camera software).

A few creative ideas for audio tags, technology pending:

• Radio DJs could send listeners to contests or to vote on what song to play next
• Retail stores could deliver coupons for nearby items
• Bands could link to the iTunes store during shows so fans can buy their tracks
• Nonprofits could ask for donations in areas directly affected by the problem they’re solving
• Restaurants could broadcast specials & happy hour discounts
• Filmmakers could push trailers and second-screen content like SideShows
• TV producers could link to episodes to purchase on the iTunes store or webisode content online

There’s a powerful convergence of location and context with audio tag technology that has a ton of potential, if the experience ends up being delivered smoothly. Time will tell if this more frictionless hardlink catches on.

The basics:

• Choose & promote a single, simple hashtag for your show
• Show the hashtag at least once between commercials & especially during dramatic moments
• Get people responding with “madlib” sentence-starter hashtags that invite jokes
• Pair hashtags with a call to action or a question, to provoke opinions
• Show the Twitter name of show stars, hosts or guests onscreen so fans can interact directly
• Have the host, star or guests livetweet and take questions during the show
• If your show is national, livetweet during the Eastern viewing
• If you show tweets onscreen, feature visual stunners & on-air talent’s behind-the-scenes access
• Show tweets on a display on the set, rather than as a graphic overlay on top of the footage

As for timing, Twitter says, “Tweeting around TV follows a fairly predictable pattern: first, anticipatory Tweets appear 15-30 minutes before the show airs on the East Coast; then, the Tweets surge during the episode (with sharp spikes in response to surprises and reveals); finally, there’s another 15-30 minutes of post-show buzz and reaction.”

These guidelines can work outside of broadcast tv, to—apply them to webisodes that are released on a schedule (to take advantage of a concentration of audience) and try placing them in YouTube videos (even though audience size at a given time will probably be less than broadcasts)—you may not get a live conversation going, but you can certainly prompt viewers to ask questions, interact with talent, and follow you for future interactions.

Awareness of QR codes

More than half of the adult population (53%) has seen a QR code somewhere in the past month. Those who tend to be more familiar with these codes include:

• Urban dwellers (57% Winnipeg residents, versus 47% of those outside Winnipeg)
• Younger Manitobans aged 18-34 years (69%, compared to 58% among those aged 35-54 years and 33% of those aged 55 years and over)
• Those earning higher household incomes (66% of those earning more than $100,000/year)
• University and college graduates (62%)

How many people have actually scanned a code?

Only 14% of those who recalled seeing a QR code say that they have actually scanned a code with their smartphones.

Younger Manitobans (22% of those aged 18-34 years, compared to 6% of those aged 55 years and over) & men (20%, versus 8% of women) were more likely to have scanned these codes at some point.

14% of the 53% who can recognize a code is 7.42% of the general population who’re likely to scan your ad in Manitoba.

This is fairly close to the number of Manitobans on Twitter but less than a 1/3 of the number with smartphones. The niche market this may work for are youngish, affluent, educated guys who are very comfortable with technology.

This article originally appeared on Erica Glasier: Oversocialized.

In lieu of gifts we’ve donated to United Way, the Humane Society, Osborne House, Children’s Hospital Foundation & Cinematheque.

That doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate gifts, like this teeny ninja that arrived from our friend Leanne at Four Letter Word!

It was a huge year. Just huge. We won awards. We went to Toronto and New York. We met Will Arnett and shot him with our absurdly talented friends at Handcraft Creative.

We added great guys like Greg, Ian, Jeff, Dan, and Chris to our team. We painted the shop for a media conference with New Media Manitoba & a federal minister (no pressure), and conceived a QR code t-shirt with HOT 103 that turned Winnipeggers into mobile donation stations for the Red Cross (and got on a nice list of “Fascinating Manitobans” for it. Thanks Ace!)

Mostly, though, we worked. We put out 3D Baby, our second iPhone app, and it’s selling like crazy (thank goodness). And coming up we’re excited to work on Verdict, a revolutionary interactive web series that combines Law & Order and American Idol. (Sounds intriguing, eh?).

And in early 2012 we’ll be releasing a follow-up to the hugely successful Tiga Talk Speech Therapy Game for the iPhone and iPad—a voice-responsive interactive storybook for kids.

Hope next year is as awesome as this one, for you and everyone.

If you really feel like dorking out, you can even don classic red-n-blue 3D glasses & see the baby in true anaglyph 3D mode.

Looks nice, eh? A few of the features:

• Gorgeous 3D renders of baby that you can spin 360 degrees
• 3D views of baby week by week
• True 3D, if you’re wearing red & blue 3D glasses!
• Neat new baby development fact for each day of your pregnancy
• Weekly updates on key baby stats, like average weight & length
• Shows the number of days until THE BIG DAY!
• Ambient audio with womb & heartbeat sounds
• Facebook & Twitter sharing, so you can show your friends where you’re at

It’s selling great so far & is even listed on the App store “new lifestyle apps” section (oh yeah!). If you’re a pregnant blogger with an incredible Klout score (kidding, kidding dying to review 3D Baby, just hit us up for a download code. We promise you’ll do some bonding—just wait til you hear that fetal heartbeat soundtrack!

The popularity of “judgement television”—reality tv, reality gameshows, and the new participatory social television—began its rise in September, 2001. The last big bubble of humour—Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier—ended with the relatively prosperous, peaceful 90′s.

Perhaps people gravitate towards judgement as entertainment to reinforce their own values, feeling more confident in their viewpoints and therefore more in control. With the availability of social proof like Twitter voting on X Factor, tribal membership is easier than ever to demonstrate, which can be a source of comfort in uncertain times.

We’re in the middle of a project now that explores people’s enjoyment of judgement. When it’s live we’ll let you know, so you can judge it

Being a grabby, experimental group of folks, toddlers seem to find gestural interfaces very intuitive. Amber MacArthur showed a video of her 2-year-old son at the Canadian Marketing Association of Manitoba’s Digital Day launching & playing Angry Birds. Apparently he’s at level 8 now.

Amber went on to tell the story of how baffling it was for her son to encounter an LCD tv that did not respond to touch.

We found the same thing with the Tactica Toddler—at 9 months, she could interact with Talking Carl on the iPhone and understand that she was initiating the character’s repsponses.

As we wrote at the time, “Touch screen interfaces are so intuitive that people who can’t read (or even recognize symbols) can learn to use them immediately. The barrier posed by interface learning curve is reduced or eliminated.” The Tactica Toddler henceforth poked at every screen she came across, expecting it to respond.

And making the rounds this week is a video of a toddler confused by why paper images aren’t interactive.

Competitiveness stirred, we’re initiating heavy Angry Birds training, at least until the AAP says we shouldn’t.

The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival is a biennial conference that gathers hundreds of international industry leaders in the areas of broadcasting and media with science and conservation experts. By offering media producers a forum for business and idea sharing, it seeks to promote sustainable management of the world’s wildlife and natural habitat.

“Games for Change is the leading global advocate for supporting and making games for social impact. It brings together organizations and individuals from the social impact sector, government, media, academia, the gaming industry and the arts to grow the field, incubate new projects and provide an open platform for the exchange of ideas and resources”.