If you are like me you use Google Alerts to alert yourself when someone mentions your brand. Each day I get LOTS of alerts for the term ShopSavvy – today was no different. One alert pointed me to a post on Google’s Retail Advertising Blog along with this sentence, “we at Google recognize the need to build better products to connect retailers with shop-savvy, local customers.”
I showed the post to our team and one of our developers was sort of pissed that Google was using our trademark when talking about local/mobile shopping. (Exactly one year ago we were granted a trademark for the term ‘ShopSavvy®’, registration number 77571663). It took me about a second to realize that even people at Google either consciously or subconsciously think about ShopSavvy when they think about mobile-powered local shopping. At the end of the day that is what ShopSavvy is all about. Who sells the products I want to buy, who has them in stock and for how much – oh and how do I get there. So I am super pumped ShopSavvy has found its way into the ether in Google’s retail team.
I don’t think Julia Tang had any ill intent when she used our trademark in her post, but we have seen a number of instances where someone will write a blog post suggesting ‘consumers can shopsavvy with [insert competitor name]‘ or use shopsavvy in their keywords in the iTunes store. We appreciate the former, but not the latter use.
No I didn’t mis-type the title – I meant ‘apps’ not ‘ads’. What an amazing idea. What if apps were delivered to your phone based on where you were instead of what you thought you needed? Jack Purcher explains the idea,
“The idea is simple. Deliver a location based service to information savvy iPhone users that wish to receive temporary retail and service-based applications. Imagine standing at the entrance of a restaurant and viewing their menu on your iPhone or entering a public library and being able to access their database. The minute you leave the library or the front of that restaurant, the app disappears so that you don’t clog up your iPhone with hundreds of local business apps.”
These temporary, location-specific apps could be huge. Our AdOns are designed to be mini-apps within a barcode/location aware app, but the possibilities for this idea (especially in retail) are endless. This new concept is going to keep our team at Big in Japan up at night.
If you are one of the hundreds of developers that downloaded our iPhone Barcode Scanner SDK before yesterday you need to update to version 1.1 of the SDK. We found a few strange bugs in the 1.0 version when we were testing the SDK in ShopSavvy. The guys have teased out the bugs and everything seems to be working well (we have submitted a new version of ShopSavvy to iTunes including the new SDK). If you are still in development please download the 1.1 version now and let us know if you have any issues. If you have already released your app, please include the update in your next version (within 30 days, per the terms of our license agreement). We will continue to improve the SDK including support for new barcode standards including Databar (coming very soon).
Turns out a LOT of folks what to include barcode scanning in their mobile applications. How do we know this? Just a couple of weeks ago we released our SDK for iPhone and a week ago we released our SDK for Android. Since then HUNDREDS of developers have downloaded them and included them in their mobile applications. Here are some stats:
700+ iPhone 2G/3G/3GS Barcode Scanner SDKs
275+ Android Barcode Scanner SDKs
200+ License Agreements Returned
There are commercial and open source options in the market, but we think our secret sauce is our AdOns ad framework. Instead of delivering a typical banner ad based on demographic or location we can deliver a highly targeted ad based on the product actually scanned by the user.
Each AdOn is dynamically generated taking into account the item scanned and the location of the user. For example, a popular AdOns™ is delivered each time a user scans a DVD. The AdOns™ plays the movies trailer of the movie scanned while promoting the retailer. Another AdOns™ takes into account the location of the user suggesting they sign up for the retailers loyalty program while explaining how much the user might save relative to the item scanned. The possibilities are endless, we are currently working on AdOns™ that include sample tracks on CDs, comic book previews, food info, allergy info, integrated coupons, cloud printing, warranties, wine info, sports/concerts tickets, computer configurator, memory card matcher, battery matcher, ‘what’s not in this box?’, alternative/related products, trailers/previews for movies and games, and product reviews/videos.
AdOns™ support Doublclick DART and Atlas campaign tracking. In late 2010 advertisers will be able to use our online tools to design rich, interactive HTML5 AdOns™ and automatically flight campaigns. Ready to create an AdOns™ for a product, location or combination of both? Just email sales@biggu.com and we can help you build an ‘ads that does more!’ AdOns™ begin at $10CPM+$2CPC and are sold on an auction style basis for popular UPCs and/or locations. Download a PDF that describes our AdOns™ program in more detail HERE.
The ShopSavvy team is SUPER pumped about the Iron Man 2 movie for two reasons. First, we can’t wait to see it and second because Tony Stark is a ShopSavvy fan. LG was kind enough to include ShopSavvy inside of Tony’s Iron Man suit (evidently his suit runs Android 2.1.Fe). LG is pre-loading ShopSavvy on their Android phones and as part of their marketing they created an Iron Man 2 branded micro-site that puts you inside of the suit. If you click on the missile attack you can use ShopSavvy from within the suit to scan the barcode on the missile. Of course the bit is tongue in cheek suggesting the villian bought the missile at Devastation, Destruction and Beyond. My favorite feature of the Iron Man version of ShopSavvy is the ‘people interested in this missile were also interested in…’ LOL. Anyway, thanks to our buddies at LG for including us in comic book history!
Have you ever wanted to scan the VIN (vehicle identification number) barcode on your car with your iPhone? Lots of iPhone developers want to build applications that do. Check out our first attempt at a VIN Barcode Scanner SDK. It is pretty good, but only works on 3GS right now. We will be updating the SDK with a speed increase as well as support for 2G and 3G iPhones in the coming weeks. For now feel free to use the SDK for free, just execute our standard license.
I am pleased to announce that we now have released both our iPhone and Android barcode scanner SDKs. They are free for developers and brands to use with our license agreement. We are nearing release of Windows Mobile and Blackberry SDKs so stay tuned. The Android version was released in Beta last week and is now live for developers: Android Barcode Scanner SDK. More than 24 developers have downloaded the Android SDK since it went live this morning compared with more than 450 downloads of the iPhone Barcode Scanner SDK.
More and more Android phones are being released without auto-focus cameras. When Verizon released the Motorola Devour, AT&T released the HTC Lancaster and T-Mobile released the HTC Tattoo – thousands of consumers emailed us complaining barcode-scanning apps like ShopSavvy didn’t work. All three had cameras without auto-focus. In our conversations with phone manufacturers we learned that as many as 30% of Android phones in the future would ship with a fixed focal length camera. We decided we had to create an entirely new scanning library to support ‘blurry barcode scanning’.
Our primary hope is that by licensing our technology at no cost to developers and brands we can bring 1D and 2D barcode scanning into the mainstream. We believe barcode scanning is a great feature that augments the user experience of any number of applications. By including a very simple, but powerful ad framework within our SDK we create an entirely new revenue stream for your application.
First released in late 2008, our 1D barcode scanning technology debuted on the first Google Android smartphone and our 2D barcode (QR Codes) scanning technology was one of the first iPhone applications accepted in the iTunes market. For almost two years millions of Android and iPhone users have scanned hundreds of millions of barcodes using our technology. Our latest technology brings together all of our experience scanning 1D and 2D barcodes on several different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian).
Hundreds of man-hours were spent creating our latest library, but instead of attempting to license our technology for a fee, we have decided to offer it to developers for free. The catch? Simply agree to include our ad framework to display a relevant ad (based on user’s location and product scanned) immediately following the barcode scan. The ad won’t interfere with your UI and is very easy to dismiss. We only ask for 30% of the ad inventory – the developer can sell the remaining 70%, leave it blank or work with our team to sell it for him. We hope this is model creates a win-win for most developers. For more information visit the following links or email sales@biggu.com.
If you are like me you use Google Alerts to alert yourself when someone mentions your brand. Each day I get LOTS of alerts for the term ShopSavvy – today was no different. One alert pointed me to a post on Google’s Retail Advertising Blog along with this sentence, “we at Google recognize the need to build better products to connect retailers with shop-savvy, local customers.”
I am pleased to announce that we now have released