Last month, automaker Nissan launched a huge campaign in Canada for 2013 Nissan Altima. This time around, they wanted to show off the innovation found in the new car with some innovation of their own: interactive print ads.

In coordination with Canada’s largest newspaper publisher Postmedia, creative agency TBWA, buying agency OMD and Layar, Nissan took over the front pages of 12 newspapers with full page ads, all enhanced using Layar. Check out the video below to see the campaign in action.

Postmedia project manager Maggie Greyson says Nissan, impressed by the capabilities of Layar, pushed to create an interactive print campaign.

“We had people looking into the future of print and they saw Claire Boonstra, co-founder of Layar, giving a lecture in New York,” says Greyson. “What Claire presented there was far above and beyond what the competition was offering. In a pitch to Nissan we incorporated Layar and it turned out to be the big shiny, innovative tool that they were attracted to.”

Yuri Machado, Postmedia’s Vice President of Integrated Advertising, was attracted to what he describes as the “natural, human interface” that Layar offers.

“Layar is a great way of bringing print to a mobile world,” he says. “I liked that it was easy for us to execute ourselves. It’s a much easier process and feels more like a natural experience than QR codes.”

The campaign also includes an 8-week editorial series called “Digital Life” which includes educational pieces that dive deeper into the world of Layar with instructions, a history of augmented reality (AR) and a company profile.

Postmedia says between 5 and 8 million people have seen the campaign. The publisher also plans to include AR in the newspapers’ coverage of the Summer Olympics to provide what it calls “second screen interaction” to the editorial content.