QR Codes Offer Value to Stations, Advertisers and Viewers
MELVILLE, N.Y. — March 15, 2022 — During the COVID-19 pandemic, QR codes have become extremely popular as a convenient, touchless option for sharing essential information. In fact, 50% of U.S. full-service restaurants are utilizing QR codes to give customers digital access to food and drink menus. Using a QR code is as fast and easy as taking a photo. One tap to a smartphone can trigger a direct download or take a person directly to their smartphone’s app store, a blog post, a video clip, a map, an e-commerce site, an image, or virtually any other type of online destination or file.
Whether you prefer to watch live sports on broadcast TV or period dramas on your favorite streaming service, you’ve probably noticed that QR codes have now made their way onto your flat-screen TV. QR codes are being used not just by major networks and OTT providers but also by local TV stations to increase the value of advertising and programming to both advertisers and viewers — and, ultimately, to station revenues as well.
QR Codes Are Easy to Add to Broadcast Graphics
If you’re a broadcaster working with the 4.3 release of Chyron’s PRIME Platform, you can integrate QR codes into local broadcasts almost as easily as your viewers can scan them. With minimal changes to your existing PRIME workflow, you can create and manage QR codes right inside the graphic scene. Rather than go out and buy new tools, you can leverage your existing investment in Chyron to enhance news, sports, and weather with additional information. You can offer advertisers a powerful and measurable new tool for viewer engagement. The benefits of QR codes truly extend throughout the whole ecosystem — your station, advertisers, and viewers.
The Local Broadcast Station
When you begin to incorporate QR codes into your daily news, sports, and weather, you gain new opportunities to connect with viewers. You can offer access to more detail or additional reporting on the stories that are getting traction with key audiences across your market. You can add interest by launching a poll or even a contest.
Whether the topic is a local sports team, the strategy for fixing problematic potholes, the latest news on a zoning issue, or conversations around school safety, your news team can use a QR code to direct viewers to further content that resonates with their interests.
Adding QR codes to your programming and promos, you can tap into those interests, drive traffic to your website, and boost your app downloads. In doing so, you offer more value to your viewers, improve your ability to track engagement, and increase your relevance across the viewing audience. You give viewers a simple, easy way to get more of the local news and information they want, when and where they want it.
[READ: Five Technologies to Make Your Broadcasts More Impactful]
The Local Advertiser
Thanks to digital marketing and various online platforms, local businesses have a variety of options — beyond the 30-second ad spot — for reaching out to potential customers. If your station is like others facing this competition, you’re being challenged by local advertisers to prove engagement and demonstrate the return on investment for an ad spend.
The addition of QR codes to local ad spots can help you to meet this challenge. With a quick tap, viewers can visit a local advertiser’s website, check out the details of a sale, learn about the newest products or services, book an appointment, and more. They can connect instantly to information they can use.
Because QR codes capture viewer interest right there in the moment, you can show local advertisers an immediate correlation between QR codes and increased user traffic and engagement metrics. Advertisers can measure engagement and determine the yield from their investment. Just as important, they can use that data to learn more about viewers and customers across ZIP codes and then use those insights to refine future campaigns. The advertiser wins, and so does your station — just by using a tool already available within your existing graphics platform.
The Local Viewer
The integration of QR codes into programming and advertising gives viewers more control and greater ownership over their viewing experience. They can engage with content on their terms and even on their own schedule.
Using a tool that’s always at hand — the smartphone — viewers can access more information instantly or effectively bookmark content for later review. Whether they miss the beginning of your newscast or need to run out the door before it ends, they can use an on-screen QR code to line up content for convenient consumption when they do have the time. Or when time is short, they can scan the code and jump right to the information they need, be it a weather brief or traffic update.
QR codes in promos and advertising likewise give viewers more control over the content they consume — and how and when they consume it. While they may not be inclined to jot down the website address or phone number of a local business as they watch an ad spot, they might just take a second to scan the QR code and open up that company’s website or its most recent online flier. It couldn’t be easier, and that’s a win for the viewer, the advertiser, and your broadcast station.
[READ: Drive Viewer Interactivity in Your OTT and Web Channels]
Unlock the Value of QR Codes in Your Live Broadcasts
Over the past months and years, QR codes have emerged as a remarkably simple yet effective means of enabling more useful, meaningful engagement. They’re also a perfect tool for augmenting local broadcasts, promos, and advertising.
If you’re already working with Chyron’s PRIME 4.3 platform, inserting QR codes into content is straightforward. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving it a try. And if you’re a PRIME user that hasn’t yet upgraded, it’s yet another great reason to consider moving to 4.3!
In addition to the new QR Code Effect, PRIME 4.3 also introduces the PRIME Edge module, providing interactive graphics for OTT and streaming content, – get the full breakdown of PRIME 4.3 and PRIME Edge here
