Beyond QR Codes: Matty Beckerman on the Future of Interactive Media

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Welcome to Adspeak Adweek's podcast about the business of marketing, media and creativity. In this episode we sharing a conversation recorded live at Brand Week featuring leaders from across the industry discussing the ideas shaping brands. Right now. Let's get into it. Hello everybody. Good afternoon. I'm Ryan Joe, I'm the editor in chief of adweek and with me is Matty Beckerman, the founder and CEO of IR Code. Now as you saw from the video, the lens and the IR code technology has a lot of really cool applications and we're going to talk about that, give you kind of a high level view of what exactly it does. And then we're going to drill a little bit into to measurement which is sort of like a more understated but super important application and one that maybe isn't as intuitive as you think. So Matti, welcome, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. And why don't you like talk to us a little bit about like what IR code is and the lens? Yeah, absolutely. So IR code is image recognition code. So what we're doing is really replacing the need for a QR code in any of your media or any of your brand content. You could literally point your camera at a piece of content that you have and scan it and engage with it. Whether it's video out of home tv, ctv, it's all then scannable and it's very advanced computer vision AI that was invented by an engineer from Germany who's working on drone image recognition work. And we converted this to use for everybody to be able to just scan and engage with content taking really in real life and digitizing it. And we were talking about this backstage. You guys are a relatively new company, right? Yeah, we're about two years old. So, you know, in the two years that you guys have been out there and available, like, what are some of the coolest marketing applications that you've seen? Well, we just did a big engagement in Times Square where we made the billboards in Times Square scannable. There's a movie called Satisfied, which is a Hamilton cast, Renee Goldsberry and Branded Cities, who has all the big Times Square billboards. We enabled it so you could just scan it and win tickets. And we had her there and made it like a big event throughout Times Square. So that was really cool. And then beyond tv, which is a fast channel TV network, has built our lens technology directly into their app. And that's sort of what we're going to kind of talk about today is we can build custom lenses for companies to take their entire database and be able to make it scannable in the real world. Amazon has a lens, Google has a lens. We can create your own company's custom lens at a fraction of the brain power that it takes to go into it. Because we've already kind of discovered all the technology behind that. We could build that quickly. Can you say, like, how some of those big clients use your lens so you build it for them, what do they want and then what do they do with it once they get it? Yeah. So we're working with major leagues and brands and TV networks. Beyond TV was a great example. We actually went to Disney World in Orlando and the host of a travel show went around Disney creating a scavenger hunt where you could then win a Disney vacation. And we had just tens of thousands of people doing this and engaging with it. It was really cool. Just as one, a test case for a television network to be able to use our technology built into their app and a real world practical application at a place like Disney. So it's built into their app and then that basically empowers their app to do things that the app wouldn't have been able to do. I scan objects in the real world without a QR code. Without a QR code. We did this for the lpga where you could scan everything while you were at the event and then the actual TV broadcast, being able to scan it and get all the player information almost immediately in real time as the event is actually happening. So those are some real applications and then it's basically an always on feature within the app. Yeah. And you don't have to Change your content at all. That's kind of the beauty of it, where you don't have to put a watermark in, you don't have to put an AR trigger. The image itself is the code, and that's what we're actually reading and bringing back information on. So it does a lot of really cool things. And I'm just kind of curious, you know, you're only two years old, what are some of the things that it doesn't do right now, but it is going to do this time next year? Yeah, like, think of us as like Shazam for image recognition right now. Right. Like, you have to have an app to do it or build it into another company's app. Our ultimate goal would to be native in camera, just like the QR code, where you no longer have to open it up and do it. I think that's the future of where we go with this. Once we've hit scale and working with a bunch of B2B partners to build up a giant user base then will lend itself to going native in camera. What does scale look like to you? Is there like a number? Is there, man? I just want everybody to be able to scan anything in the real world and do it. Right now, any user who downloads our app in the App Store can create their own IR code really quickly and simply. And then your information is then scannable. So our next step is allowing the whole world to be able to create a digital image that is then scannable in the real world. But how do I create my own lens? Do I just upload, like, my product list? Yeah. And then our backend system, you could literally drag and drop any of your media right into it. And then the best part is, and I think the next thing we were going to talk about is the attribution behind that and knowing now for the first time, like, who's engaging with your content in the real world and what their interests are. And we have a measurement tool that gives you a heat map of the world. And if you've got a big campaign out there, you can now tell who's engaging, where they're engaging, how they're engaging, what they're scanning and what they're interested in. So for attribution and real organic user interest, this is a tool that solves for that. How, for the first time, I think, when did you guys introduce the measurement and attribution component? Is that like brand new or is that something that was always baked in at inception? We started thinking about it when we started getting into the advertising side so we started off in the art world of, you know, nobody wants to put an ugly QR code on the Mona Lisa, so you wanted to be able to walk through an art gallery and be able to scan all the art there and get all the information and provenance behind it and IP protection. And then when we started talking about the advertising world, it became necessary to say who's engaging with this, how they're engaging with it. And so we built that into our backend system now, where you can now track all the measurement behind it. What sort of measurement are you getting back? Like, who's engaging? Like, how long do you. You know, it depends if you've opted in. Of course, for privacy protection, we keep the user data anonymized, but it feeds right into your API backend system where you get a scan log and you could actually see a heat map of the number of scans that are happening in any given city or market around the world. So it's global. Has this improved selling with IR lens? You know, because now you can kind of show results. Yeah. We were having a great conversation with a company that does advertisements with TV placement and they've said, man, you know, Nielsen can tell you if a television's on in someone's home and you can tell us who's watching that television, which is a big deal. Like now you have the finally, like a full funnel view of what engagement you're really getting organically of who's actually interested in it. Are all of your clients or your advertiser marketer clients using it? Is it just something that they automatically get? Yeah, you automatically get it if you're one of our clients. Especially with the lens system, we're custom building those for companies, they get their own dashboard, they get their own database structure and their own lens built directly into their app. With our SDK before about, you know, the lens in general, but for the measurement and attribution component, like what sort of new features do you envision kind of rolling out in 2026? Yeah. So if you're gamification, I mean, you could scan a TV show that has a contest in it and suddenly you're playing on your phone alongside of what's happening on the tv or you're watching the latest reality show and then able to purchase all the products right on the screen. So all that's then measured and product placement on steroids. So it gives anybody that has a brand or a product that's featured on a TV show the ability to suddenly have a direct link to buy it. Whether you're the brand or the retailer who's selling it. It just opens the whole world up for product placement. I'm a creator at heart. I mean, I'm a filmmaker. I owned a record label, I played guitar in a band growing up. I directed a few movies. And it was always important for me when creating something that I had providence and engagement behind it. But also when we'd funded independent film, it was really important for us to have product placement and brand placement in that film that would help us fund as an independent filmmaker, part of the cost of making it. So now when I go out to a brand who's interested in product placement in a film, imagine now being able to scan that product and have measurement and be able to purchase it right there. So it becomes a huge tool for an independent creator to be able to monetize their content. How does being a tech CEO compare to being like a director or a producer man? It's exactly the same. When you're directing a movie, you're dealing with a crew of 150 people, art department and props and lighting and all those pieces. So as a CEO, it's the same. They're all coming to me to ask me questions every day. So the energy of directing a film is almost identical to the energy of running a company. And it's great for me because that was always my favorite part of making a movie, wasn't the producing leading up to it. It was actually making the film and being creative. And so I get to do that every single day with an incredible team of people. You mentioned product placement being sort of a capability or something that Irelands can really facilitate. Is that something that's happening right now or is that something that's going. Yeah, it's something that's happening right now. We're taking major films and analyzing it from start to finish. And then you're going to be able to scan it and then buy the products you see on the screen almost immediately. And we're doing that for tv, we're doing that for out of Home, and it's a really fun project. Can you say which films, if you like marketing conversations with actual receipts, not vibes, not vanity metrics. Quick recommendation for you. I've been listening to the Marketing Architects podcast and it's one of those shows, shows that makes you stop and think for a second. They dig into effectiveness research around topics marketers love to debate like tv, advertising, measurement, AI and what happens when brand and sales goals collide. It's thoughtful little contrarian in the best way and focused on ideas you can take back to your team for smart, honest marketing conversations on crafting goals your CMO and CFO agree on. Search for the marketing architects wherever you're listening right now. Marketing architects blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. I remember telling my boss it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it, it wasn't. Cut the bull. Spend LinkedIn lets you target by company job title and More. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply. Yeah, so the movie called Satisfied, which is the Hamilton documentary, is currently scannable and we're, you know, it's an Amblin released movie. So it's Spielberg's company and the company's called Aura. So it's just a really cool thing. We did this in Times Square. You could see from that video started with the billboards and the out of home and now the in home. And the video is actually now scannable. While you're watching it right from your couch. I want to talk a little bit about the IR lens white label system, which is new, and then I'm going to throw it open to questions. So what is that exactly? So we're able to build our lens directly into your app in your own ecosystem as a company or a brand. And you know when you have companies that have spent billions of dollars developing this technology, we've had this patented since 2015 and the ability to do this for companies at SC at a cost level that's actually reasonable and a way we can do that and help you with measurement and analytics and making all of your products and scannable in the real world, it's super exciting. Is it generally available now or. Yeah, yeah, we're doing this actively and what's it different and how does that differ from what you guys offered previously? So initially we were using this technology and figuring out like the best practical use cases and it became really clear that companies wanted to build their own lenses. And we just kind of stepped into that full force saying we can do it. And we built a whole system that's almost turnkey for a company to create a lens in less than 48 hours and suddenly you're up and running with it. It's a powerful piece of tech. Do you need any specialized like engineering talent in order to do it? We have an SDK, so most of it's there. So if you do have a good tech team, they can integrate it pretty quickly. But we do a lot of handholding, you know, in the beginning to get it off the ground. Cool. Well, Matt, I'm going to. We have five minutes left, so I'm going to throw this open to Q and A. Are you able to do any of these sort of scanning opportunities with packaging and grocery stores? Yeah, so we have a giant grocery store client I just got off the phone with. We're doing this in their stores. I can't say who yet because we haven't signed a deal, but exactly that. So big retail where you can scan every item and packaging on the shelves and get information behind it, or in the real world, if that packaging exists in front of you, you could scan it without having to have a QR cod, having to change the artwork on that packaging. So you can just get more information as you scan the product. Yeah, couponing more information, product details, even instruction manuals. We were talking about doing this for like Lego and like the toy business. And like, how cool is that? Like, suddenly you can learn all the information behind a toy. I have a 4 year old, so this is the way I think that would have to be helpful. You scan a Lego and be like, where does this piece go? Yeah, yeah, they have the instructions and I've sat there and of course, you know, everybody's done this. They're just scattered everywhere. But I just want to SC and then have the ability to put it together. We don't have a deal with Lego. I'm just talking theoretically. Yeah, well, sometimes they show up at brand Week, so who knows? Yeah, they might be here. If Lego's here, come say hi. I guess I've answered all the questions. Well, I've got a few more actually. You know, like, what are your biggest verticals? Where do you kind of play the most? I think TV advertising is sort of the first thing we're going after. We're going to make every ad on television scannable and then allow the brands to log in, create where those landing pages go, what experience somebody gets when they're scanning, and then give the brands the measurement data behind it. So that's sort of the biggest thing we're doing first, the ability to do that. We're rolling it out with local TV networks first and then going to expand nationwide and then globally. You're getting a TV measurement that feels a little dicey. You know, it's great. I mean, TV measurement is everybody Wants it. You know, people are using QR codes to do this now. I mean, if you see YouTube has like the sponsored link up, and then when you click that sponsored link, a QR code comes up. We're just eliminating that extra step. And it's not just on YouTube. It could be on every ad out there, on every platform, on every distributor. So the content, it's just like putting a URL on an ad. You just simply have an IR code now. It's scannable, and you don't have to change that content everywhere you're going. And now you could see the measurement across every single network or distributor. Does the AI component come into play? Like, was it the computer vision? Is that where the AI component comes into play? It's computer vision AI. So it was developed by an engineer in Germany about 10 years ago doing drone image recognition. So what we do is, and I've explained this last year, I explained this too. But it takes a fingerprint of that image, which is completely unique to that image, and then we're able to store the metadata from that image and feed it right back into it. And so it sounds a little complicated, but it's really advanced. And the reason it works so well is it actually doesn't change the image whatsoever. We're just reading that image, finding the fingerprint in it, and sending information back. So even if it's altered or in bad lighting or there's an obstruction, it will still find that image and give you the exact match to that. And then do you use AI? Does that kind of also help facilitate the measurement component that we talked about earlier? Yeah, we use AI as a matching structure. We have a vector databasing system that. With a neural network attached to it that helps us match faster and match more accurately. So that's how we use AI in the back end of our system. And that's something we invented, so it's actually proprietary to our patents. Cool. And we talk about a lot of different use cases for IR code and the IR lens. Are there any kind of new use cases that you're kind of anticipating in 2026? Man, like live sporting events. That's a big one. When you're in a stadium and you can then start a scavenger hunt throughout the stadium for everybody that walks through the door. We've done a couple really cool demos on that for some major leagues. And then the live broadcast of a game while you're watching it. We actually made the super bowl scannable from start to finish last year as a demonstration. And that we could do it. So all those things are really exciting now. The leagues and teams that are seeing this, to be able to scan a live sporting event and engage with everything on that screen. It's exciting to me as a sports fan too. Any applications for the actual, like using it in game? Like. Like being able to tell whether something's a ball or a strike or whether something. Whether the ball crossed the goal line? Yeah, we're sorry not to trigger anyone. No, we're experimenting with things like that. There's a great YOLO vision model out there that can track everything and how we incorporate that into our technology. We're thinking about it a lot right now. It's really more user engagement, fantasy stats, checking out replays quickly shopping the gear. I have a great demo of being able to scan a jersey of a player while you're in stadium and then immediately buy that jersey. So it's all things like that we can do. All right. Well, Matti, very exciting. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That was a conversation recorded live at Brand Week. You can find more coverage, analysis and interviews from across the marketing and media world@adweek.com thanks for listening to Ad Speak. If you like the show, be sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Flowing. Ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. I remember telling my boss it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it. It wasn't. Cut the bull. Spend LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and More. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign to earn and conditions apply. 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