The Communications Council is urging mobile phone manufacturers to include Near Field Communications (NFC) in all future handsets as the technology opens up marketing opportunities for advertisers.
NFC technology is an embedded chip which allows communications between two platforms. For example, it is already present in technologies including Visa Paywave, which allows a user to swipe their credit card near a terminal to process the transaction.
The Communications Council believes the time is ripe for a mass roll-out of NFC technology by mobile manufacturers. Rumours have been circulating for months Apple will include NFC in its iPhone 5 handset. The Nokia N9 handset will be released next month with NFC technology.
In addition to transactions, NFC opens up opportunities for marketers including accessing additional information from traditional and digital forms of advertising, delivering location-based offers to consumers and contactless check-ins for social networks.
Marketers can also build on opportunities offered by QR codes, but will not have to contend with barriers such as physically having to download a program and pointing at the QR code.
Research from Juniper suggests 300 million handsets worldwide will have the technology by the end of 2014. Earlier this year, Google introduced Google Wallet in the US, which effectively monetises a mobile phone.
Communications Council Digital Committee chairman and Amnesia Razorfish executive creative director, Iain McDonald, said: "We think there are numerous creative applications for NFC technology beyond transactional interactions. Marketing communications clients and agencies are eagerly engaging consumers in these exciting new ways."
Communications Council Digital Committee member and Big Mobile's Graham Christie said: "The growth of mobile marketing in Australia in the last 18 months has been so rapid so we're encouraging marketers to look at where NFC can fit into their marketing and customer programs, and take the connections they have with audiences to the next level."
In Australia, radio network Nova, Queen Victoria Building and Network Ten have used NFC technology in some out-of-home campaigns in partnership with Tapit, an NFC company.
DTDigital creative technologist Tim Devine told AdNews: "NFC is the tip if the iceberg. Bascially what it does is expand the internet into the offline world. The technology will fully enable a total integration of all online and offline media."
Devine said big players are undertaking the technology including Google, Visa and MasterCard.
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