A growing number of businesses are finding marketing success through mobile barcodes, according to a profile in Ad Age.

The franchise owner of a Mexican restaurant chain told Ad Age that he recently bought ads in the campus newspaper to promote his Qdoba located in the college town of Ann Arbor, Mich. Each ad included a code that people could scan with their cellphones to get a buy-one-get-one-free burrito coupon.

The campaign generated a 52 percent redemption rate from about 4,000 scans, which translates to about 1 percent of the total target student population, according to Peter Shipman, the franchise owner.

"You use different media for different applications, and for a grand opening, this was appropriate," he told Ad Age.

Part of the long-established problem with mobile barcodes is that mobile phones must come preloaded with the necessary software to scan the codes and not every phone has that feature. The technology is almost entirely exclusive to high-end smartphones.

Ad Age found that Qdoba is part of a small but growing group of marketers who are giving the technology a shot. According to three large vendors working on mobile barcodes -- Scanbuy, Jagtag, and Clic2C -- at least 15 national retail initiatives will be launched in April.