Spiegel Wissen, a quarterly spin-off of Der Spiegel, is the first European magazine to use near-field communication (NFC) technology in this way. Tapping a smartphone on the four-page BMW advert, which features in the latest edition of the magazine, instantly downloads the BMW i app. Customers interacting with the print ad are directed to the most relevant content, based on which operating systems they use or how often they have tapped the ad previously.

Tamoco, a two-year old company, has developed the technology and the software platform that it runs on.