Newspaper publishers are looking for interactive ways to keep their readers interested (and if possible glued). And the U.K. tabloid newspaper The Sun has done the same.

By offering its print content online The Sun aims at making the paper more interactive and enabling more efficient ROI measurement for advertisers. The system runs on barcodes called Quick Response or QR codes. This function grants users access to Internet content on their cell phones. The codes are supposed to deliver great editorial and advertiser content with ease. Some of the advertisers making use of the service include Twentieth Century Fox and Ladbrokes, a sports booking service.

The printed QR codes are read by a program that utilizes the phone’s camera to translate the code into a Web link. The link can then be followed to retrieve online content, hence removing the need to type lengthy URLs into a mobile browser, and better track readers as they go from print to digital.

Even the advertiser’s benefit with QR codes directly measuring the effectiveness of QR-enabled print campaigns through the amount of traffic received. The ingenious codes can even be used as vouchers. The user could simply scan a code and present the resulting data at a retail outlet to receive discounts or special offers. The codes are not new to the industry. It has already been used by millions of users in Japan.

The Sun is a tabloid daily newspaper published in the United Kingdom with the highest circulation of any daily English-language newspaper in the world, standing at 3,126,866 copies daily in October 2007 and with a daily readership of 7,909,000.

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