Entertainment Weekly is bringing its annual summer movie preview issue to life with Microsoft 2D tags.

Consumers will be able to view the official trailers of 16 of the films featured in the issue directly on their smartphones. The publication is using third-party video content within the editorial product.

?Our goal was to bring the summer movie preview to life, allowing readers to view video and therefore enhance their reading experience and to also create a site, sound, and motion experience throughout our edit content and advertiser messaging,? said Barrie Gordon, senior manager of public relations at Entertainment Weekly, New York.

Movie viewer interaction
To view the tags, consumers can open the mobile browser on their smartphone and go to http://gettag.mobi to download the technology.

Once the Microsoft Tag application is downloaded, readers can wave their camera phone over 2D bar codes throughout the issue to be taken directly to the official trailers on YouTube.

The 2D tags are not just limited to the editorial content.

There are five different advertisers including, Absolut, HBO, History Channel, Honda and CTAM/Movies on Demand that are participating in the program.

Absolut is linking consumers to a commercial spot.

Consumers can watch HBO?s new trailer for ?You Don?t Know Jack.?

The History Channel is linking to the official WAP site of the new series  ?America: The Story of Us.?

Honda is linking to a dealer locator at shophonda.com.

Time Warner Cable is linking to the ?It?s Complicated? trailer.

?The target audience is our typical reader, an entertainment enthusiast, who likes to be the first to try things and talk about it with their network of friends,? Ms. Gordon said.

Here is a screen grab of the HBO ad:

Mobile tags galore
Users can view several of the summer?s upcoming movie trailers including, ?Sex and the City 2,? ?Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,? ?Iron Man 2,? ?The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,? and ?Dinner for Schmucks.?

Entertainment Weekly is currently looking at featuring 2D tags in future issues.

Here is a screen grab of the Absolut ad:

?Colorful 2D tags transform offline marketing media such as print advertising, billboards, packaging and merchandising in stores or on LCD displays, into live links for accessing information and entertainment online,? said Marja Koopmans, general manager at Microsoft Startup Business Group, Seattle.

?Tag is an end to end solution giving publishers rich analytics that can inform their marketing strategies and spend,? she said. ?The Tag technology enables many consumers to read tags from supported mobile phones and reduces the size of the visual significantly.?