QR Codes Aren’t Giving Consumers What They Want. Just 9% of adults in the US have used a QR code in the past year, and slow adoption is expected in the coming years, according to a new report by eMarketer.
Once a promising mobile marketing tool, mobile barcodes have not connected with large audiences, the report noted. While some US marketers have seen success, their experience has proven to be the exception, not the rule. The new report, “QR Codes: Marketers Keep Hitting ‘Go,’ but Consumer Adoption Still Slow,” analyzes findings from dozens of third-party research providers and interviews with industry executives, answering key questions about the opportunities and challenges mobile barcodes present, including: How do consumer adoption rates for mobile barcodes in other countries compare to the US?
What Changing Social Media Usage Means for Marketers. The number of Facebook users in the US will increase 13.4% this year, eMarketer estimates, after 38.6% growth in 2010 and a whopping 90.3% rise the year before.
The rate of adult Twitter user adoption has similarly begun to plateau, dropping from 293.1% growth in 2009 to 26.3% this year and still slowing. In many developing countries, these and other networks are seeing their audience growth taper off as most new users come from other countries such as the BRIC nations and Indonesia. Meanwhile, users in more advanced countries have been shifting their behaviors after spending years on the sites. According to the GlobalWebIndex “Wave 5 Trends” report, social network usage growth has all but stopped among 16- to 24-year-olds in the US, and in a few countries usage within this already-saturated group is actually declining.
Meanwhile, on microblogs like Twitter, the heaviest users are focused on disseminating content. Daily. Daily.