[corin_]

Essentially the biggest reason they are used so much is because of the argument "why not?"

I was in a meeting with the organisers of a pretty big consumer tech event, a couple of clever, successful people, and they mentioned that they were going to be putting QR codes on nearly all branding at the event we were discussing. I, slightly rudely, chuckled and asked why on earth they would do that; the answer: "We've found a site where you can make them really, really cheap - like, almost free - so we might as well!"

[DHowett]

The real WTF is... Almost free? Like, they found a company that will, what, sell you an image of black and white boxes for mere pennies? God, imagine the money they could make swindling companies with a per-scan advertising fee! Pixels will be mined like gold!

Apparently nobody in Corporate has heard of a free online barcode generator. You can even print the barcode as many times as you want! Maybe they just do not trust free services?

[jarek]

I imagine it's the tracking and statistics provided by paid services that is the really useful point from business point of view. Marketing people love response tracking.

[corin_]

Nope, in this case it was the creating of QR codes for printing. Don't worry, I did laugh pretty hard right in front of them and told them that it's easy to make them absolutely free - ah well, they'd already paid at this point.

[Scotchy]

Well you can still track how many people scan it, right ? e.g. by providing a proxy link ?

[corin_]

Yeah sure - plenty of people do QR codes that go through bit.ly, just as possible to do it through any other tracking platform.

[crisnoble]

bitly provides qr codes for every link generated with their service. Just go to the info page. ex: https://bitly.com/FPUVjU+

[mopoke]

As, indeed, they should. If you don't track something, how do you know if it's effective? Measure everything you can.