Last week Old Navy launched an exciting interactive ad campaign with Shazam. Old Navy is running 30 and 60 second spots with brand new music showcasing their newest clothing line. 

Users can launch Shazam whenever they hear the music to recognize the song. Once Shazam recognizes the song, users will receive coupons, discounts and product information. Occasionally, Old Navy will even reward customers with huge discounts for using Shazam while in their stores. 

These are entirely original songs, but the bands are not real. (The band in the latest spot is Audio Threadz) Old Navy will use different “bands” and original music throughout the year to showcase their latest clothing lines. Get ready for more of Old Navy’s catchy jingles to get stuck in your head!   

Speaking of synchronized television, Digimarc has a joint venture with Nielsen that enables viewers of Grey's Anatomy to have an enhanced experience while watching.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. With the growing popularity of eBooks, eTablets, and getting information via the Web and now our mobile phones, many question, "Why do we even need print?"

We know that teens and "twenty-somethings" never look at the printed edition of the newspaper. While I'm definitely not "twenty-something," I have always embraced technology and am an early adopter of all of the latest digital devices and toys. I love my Kindle for travel, can't wait to own an iPad (when it has a camera in the next version), and I spend countless hours online. I love all of these things, but nothing replaces the experience of flipping through the pages of a book or scanning through my favorite magazines and the morning newspaper.

Here's what I find irreplaceable...

This past week we exhibited at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. For four days we saw a steady stream of publishers, mobile marketing companies, agencies and major brands come through the booth in search of the perfect mobile solution for print. Our stand was just across the aisle from Blackberry – who had a significantly larger presence this year over 2010, and was covered in large QR Codes.

Without a doubt we saw more and more uses of barcodes as the quest for engaging consumers through interactive print continues. Interestingly, however, is that every single person we spoke with commented how barcodes are ugly and they really don’t want to use them...

Greetings from Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona Spain. This conference is the largest gathering for anything related to mobile and yours truly was there, not only to witness the swarm of 55,000 people, but to launch the Digimarc Discover Online Services Portal (OSP). We had our own booth right in the App Planet, where many of the folks that stopped by thought we were the coolest new technology around. You can see some panaromic photos of the the entire show right here.

With the Online Services Portal you can now turn your printed content into new rich interactive experiences, and all of it can be done directly from the portal. That's right, just create a free acount, watermark your image, identify the URL that the image will link to, and select when and how long it will be active. Once your watermarked images are printed, they can be read using our free Digimarc Discover reader, downloadable from the iTunes App Store or the Android Market. No barcodes cluttering up your layout. Setting up an account is simple and during our Open Beta ( through May 31st 2011) you can turn your printed content interactive for free. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.digimarc.com/portal to get started!

The Nielsen Company (Nielsen) embeds audio digital watermarks into the US TV broadcast workflow. These watermarks are detected by Nielsen households and aggregated into a rating for a particular program and market.

Advertisers have been seeking a similar system, a system that would provide a rating by commerical, for quite some time. At a recent conference Nielsen endorsed the Ad-ID standard, and announced plans to incorporate Ad-ID within its watermarking system to provide commercial ratings.

Read more at the NY Times blog

Ad-ID enables individual commercials to be tracked from the beginning to the end of their life. The Ad-ID standard, created in 2003, is managed by the ANA and the 4A's (formerly the American Association of Advertising Agencies).

Last Thursday Digimarc helped sponsor the Beer West launch party at Spirit of 77 in Portland. We had an exceptional turnout and the crowd was having a great time interacting with our technology in the Beer West winter issue. (Let me know if you haven’t seen it; I’ll send you a copy of this groundbreaking issue: www.digimarc.com/beerme)

Overall, there was a great vibe throughout the night. I’m sure the sponsored kegs from New Belgium and Sierra Nevada helped encourage the fun atmosphere. The launch party was an enjoyable event to showcase our technology to the beer, tech, and media communities in the Portland area. I know we amazed the crowd with our technology. It was great hearing multiple people at the event tell us that Digimarc could “revolutionize the publishing industry.” One of my favorite quotes of the night was when somebody told me that “we could change the world with our technology.” Seriously, who doesn’t love hearing that?!?

Disney/ABC Television Group today announced the new "Grey's Anatomy" Sync App for iPad App, now available on the App store.

Powered by the Media-Sync Platform, the app provides fans of the show the ability to interact with exclusive content in real time using iPad.  The Media-Sync platform relies on audio watermarks already inserted into nearly every TV program in the U.S. as part of Nielsen's industry standard TV audience ratings service. 

View a video demonstration of the technlogy at work.

Media-Sync is a joint venture between The Nielsen Company and Digimarc Corporation.