Trinity Mirror reveals plans to print QR codes next to editorial mentions of products

Trinity Mirror is to introduce technology across its top titles which will allow readers to buy products mentioned in editorial.

Marketing and media news site The Drum reports that Trinity Mirror's director of new business development, Matt Colebourne, disclosed the plans in a speech to the Internet Retailing Expo in Birmingham last week.

Colebourne said QR codes would be printed alongside articles, allowing readers to use tablets or smartphones to purchase products or services which had been featured.

The Drum reports that the plans, which Trinity Mirror has confirmed with Press Gazette, are due to be implemented across the publishing group's top 20 titles in April this year.

Colebourne said the new strategy was driven by the commercial potential in the audience that Trinity Mirror reached as the country's biggest publisher.

He told retailers: "Our business is creating an audience and then allowing the audience to buy things from you in partnerships and monetising directly through that… The natural idea is to build the audience and if they choose to buy something as a result of that then they can do so through our environment."

But he said the new strategy would not influence editorial decisions, and would simply facilitate a pre-existing potential for advertising partnerships.

"[Editorial departments] have done their usual job looking at what's current and whats happening and once they've done that, the natural reaction of the audience, if they like what they are seeing, is to ask where they can get that and ideally we can take a step further and answer that question for them. We can introduce them directly to a service which will allow them to buy directly from a page."

The news comes at the same time as Trinity Mirror's launch of the new PaperPay application, which will allow readers to purchase newspapers using their mobile phones in newsagents.