Enabling readers to buy directly from magazines or newspapers has been an elusive goal for years, and it’s becoming a more urgent one as print/online outlets see revenues slipping. This week The Wall Street Journal launched a shoppable holiday gift guide in the WSJ Select section of wsj.com (separate from editorial content). Customers pay for purchases within WSJ Select, then receive packages from the retailers selling the featured items and deal with them for returns. According to Ad Age, the publisher expects to continue the section beyond the holidays (e.g., Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day guides) and possibly make some editorial posts shoppable as well.
Magazines, meanwhile, have been finding ways to fuse content with commerce so that it’s a quick hop from reading about an item to buying it. Harper’s Bazaar recently launched an e-commerce platform, ShopBazaar, featuring editorial content and editor-selected items. The print magazine will display icons next to those items available on ShopBazaar, and beginning in 2013, readers will be able to use a smartphone to access the site from the page. Esquire’s December issue lets readers do just that thanks to the Netpage app, which enables an iPhone to interact with a printed page sans visible codes or watermarks; the screen displays a digital replica of the page. Readers who use Netpage to “clip” products from a collection of “Great American Things,” selected by Esquire and Made Collection, see a “buy” button that links to an online storefront. Magazines can also use augmented reality apps like Blippar and Aurasma. Earlier this year, for instance, U.K. retailer ASOS partnered with Aurasma on an app, Scan to Shop, that makes the brand’s magazine instantly shoppable.
We have looked at this technology a number of times and now it appears that Aurasma is really gaining momentum. Below is a press release from their site taliking about how Tottenham Hotspur are the first football team to adopt the technology.
LONDON — October 1, 2011 — Tottenham Hotspur has launched a revolutionary new way of communicating with fans by delivering quality video content using Aurasma – a new technology for mobile devices developed by the Club’s Premier League sponsor Autonomy – which recognises key ‘triggers’, kicking off with the team shirt, official team photo and Club badge.
Aurasma is the world’s first visual browser. Running on your mobile device, Aurasma recognizes and understands real-world images and objects – much the same way the human brain does – and then seamlessly blends them with interactive multimedia content such as videos and animations called “Auras”.
Fans can now point their Aurasma-enabled iPhones and iPads at the front of this season’s Tottenham Hotspur Premier League shirt to launch footage of this season’s Premier League goals. The videos will be updated throughout the season and will include, for example, exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage from around the Club, player interviews and news. Even photos of Spurs players wearing the Premier League shirts, when reproduced in newspapers, will be able to trigger video content – provided the photo includes a ‘trigger’ such as the front of the shirt and the Aurasma logo.
To get closer to the team than ever before, all fans have to do is download the Official Spurs News App to their iPhone 4 or iPad 2.
The Official Spurs News App is already packed full of exclusive features, including live commentary from every first team match and can now, thanks to Aurasma, bring the Club’s merchandise to digital life. In addition, fans will also be able to use the Spurs App to create their own Auras and share them with their friends.
In addition to the Premier League shirt, Tottenham Hotspur has also created the first ever Aurasma-enabled official team photo. Wherever the official 2011/2012 team photo appears – newspapers, on postcards or even posters – the players will instantly come to life in video when viewed with Aurasma. As with the team shirt and official team photo, the historic Club badge delivers video too – in this case, classic goals from Tottenham Hotspur’s 20 consecutive years in the Premier League.
Tottenham Hotspur Executive Director, Donna-Maria Cullen, said, “Aurasma is an exciting technology and provides a new way to engage with our fans. It allows us to share exclusive, behind-the-scenes video content in totally new ways. We are extremely proud to be the first ever Premier League club to bring the Aurasma experience to fans.”
To date, two million users have downloaded Aurasma and Aurasma-enabled applications such as the Official Spurs News App. Over 400 commercial partners are now using the technology in campaigns or have embedded Aurasma into their own applications, including Panasonic, GQ magazine, J D Wetherspoons, Hyundai, Magners and Virgin Atlantic.
Aurasma’s Managing Director, Martina King, said, “We’re delighted to be partnering with such a historic club to bring football home to fans in a completely new way. This is just the beginning – Aurasma is going to transform the way we all see and interact with the world. For the first time, it brings an interactive multimedia experience to newspapers and magazines, product packaging, clothing and even physical places. And best of all, Aurasma’s really useful – whether for example it’s showing an easy to follow video of assembly instructions on a box of Ikea flat-pack furniture, a Jamie Oliver video on a jar of pasta sauce, or simply enabling the sports pages of red tops like The Sun or The Mirror to instantly come to life with match highlights.”
I have dropped a video below to highlight the technology:
Posted by david ricketts 
