Mobile marketing and technology company Nellymoser creates these types of ads for magazines and conducted the research, so the company obviously has skin in this game, but its findings are interesting for showing how marketers are changing the ways they use these action codes. (The report doesn’t focus on how well action codes are actually, you know, spurring action but I’ve asked for some follow-up data.) Some findings:

—Mobile action codes are much more likely to be used in ads than in editorial content—the ratio of advertising codes to editorial codes was 25:1 by December 2011. Editorial codes were primarily used to run sweepstakes.

—Most action codes were used to showcase a video (54 percent), often a video created specifically for mobile use. 30 percent were used for data capture and list building, especially sweepstakes. “While sweeps can be run with one action code, there is a growing trend towards sweepstakes that span an entire publication with multiple advertisers and editorial sections participating, each with its own code,” the report says.

—Nearly 40 percent of codes were created by the beauty, home and fashion industries and the codes were especially likely to appear in women’s magazines.

The last 20 years have been tough for print, in large part because print outlets have failed to become early-adapters to new technology. So, here is a new technology with the promise of solving a fundamental problem in newspapers and magazines - measuring response. Publications should welcome and embrace 2-D bar codes. At Mediabids, we have. We believe they will revolutionize how print ads are placed and even paid for.

Here is a good description from the most recent Forbes:

The codes, which are sometimes called QR codes for "quick response," are a sibling technology to the familiar bar codes found on product packaging. 2-D bar codes, however, store data in two dimensions, letting them stash more data than regular bar codes, including information like Web site and e-mail addresses.

Here's how it works: People scan or "snap" the codes with a cellphone camera. The phone's browser then activates and is automatically directed to a designated Web site linked to the code.

Though popular in Japan, where they are viewed as a simple way to pay bills and download videos, 2-D bar codes remain a very niche technology in the U.S.