

Captcha Advertising - wherespaul
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-05-03-n58.html
what an awesome idea!
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fabiandesimone
Explaining a regular captcha is hard enough. I can see my-self explaining
this:

Me: You see... you need to enter the quoted text in the small box below.

User: The text? Oh ok... (enters: Dish Networks)

Me: Oh no, I'm sorry I meant the "quoted" text, below all the fancy graphics
and logo. The one with the quotes. You have to enter it without the quotes.

User: Oh ok... So, I just enter the text without the quotes? I thought I did
that already.

Me: No, no. Just enter the letters within the quotes. i.e: "Hello" you need to
enter Hello.

User: Oh I see...

User: Ok, so I enter the quoted text, without the quotes in the box below?
(user clicks on the black box where it says: ENTER THE QUOTED TEXT

Is not working. I does not let me enter the text. What's wrong?

Me: Actually is in the empty box below, where it says "Your Answer"

User: My answer? My answer to what? Nobody has asked any questions? Do they
want me to says yes or no to the discount?

Me: ... wait one second... (calls developers: take the captcha out of the
form. Pronto)

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hristov
The problem is that for captcha to work properly, there has to be an enormous
number of possible captcha words and phrases.

If people use advertising slogans for captcha text, then the advertising execs
will only be able to come up with a very limited number of slogans (they are,
after all, only human and from my experience they are not the type of humans
that work too hard). And if there is a limited number of captcha texts, the
hackers will easily program bots to recognise them.

~~~
axod
q. please enter the capital letters from the phrase!

"PEpsi is Best drInk in tHe worLD"

a. PEBIHLD

~~~
qq66
The Corporate Branding team will say that capitalizing PE in Pepsi is a
violation of brand guidelines. Welcome to the Fortune 500.

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jhuckestein
A German startup is doing this, too: <http://www.captchaad.com/>

IIRC Microsoft even tried to patent this. The article's claim that only one
company is working "as the middleman between advertisers and webmasters in
order to display CAPTCHA ads" seems slightly exaggerated ;)

~~~
scg
There's also a Romanian startup doing this <http://www.adcaptcher.com/> and
I'm sure there are a couple more.

The referenced article claims the startup in question is singular.

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ErrantX
This has been pitched as an idea in the past; I don't think it really took off
then either.

One of the problems is that users have become accustomed to skipping over ads
- they either miss the captcha entirely first go (not great) or get put off by
having to engage in the ad (also not great).

~~~
dutchflyboy
So true, I actually had to search a little moment for the quoted text even
though it isn't placed in a strange place. The brain apparently concludes that
ads=noise.

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ansonparker
The main flaw in this plan is the context in which Captcha's are generally
used -- sign-up forms, comment forms etc.

They're part of a deliberate user action, not part of a general browsing
behaviour.

People mid-stream in a sign-up form are very unlikely to follow an ad -- or if
they do so, it might be at the cost of the primary activity.

I think it's for reasons similar to this that Facebook ads perform so poorly
(apparently).

~~~
jcl
The point isn't to make the user follow the ad -- the point is to force the
user to parse the ad as a step towards something the user wants. The theory is
that this gets a message into the user's brain in a way that traditional
advertisements do not.

While it looks like a captcha and appears in similar contexts, calling it a
captcha is misleading: It fulfills its primary function even if it lets all
the bots through.

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ConfidentTech
I agree that asking people to enter a phrase from the advertisement is not
going to be a very secure CAPTCHA test because the advertiser is never going
to be able to come up with enough different phrases to make a captcha that
will be secure against brute force attacks. Also, if they want their dish
network ad displayed often (to get more impressions) then again it's basically
a static image that is not changing often enough to keep out bots.

An alternative could be this:
[http://www.confidenttechnologies.com/products/confident_CAPT...](http://www.confidenttechnologies.com/products/confident_CAPTCHA.php)

The user is presented with a grid of images. The pictures themselves and their
location on the grid change with each session. A website could insert just a
few of their own images within the grid, as a way of reinforcing brand
recognition without being blatant advertising that forces the user to enter a
slogan. For example, if it's a sporting goods website, they could include some
images of the items they sell among the stock photos. Because it's a grid of
images that changes every time, there would be a huge amount of combinations
possible, making it a stronger captcha against brute force attacks from bots.

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driekken
I'm starting to get a disconcerting feeling because of these ubiquitous ads in
everything and everywhere. No wonder we become desensitized - it's the only
way our brain can cope with the information overload.

A short film (Logorama, Oscar winner in 2009) that explains it much better
than I ever could: <http://vimeo.com/10149605>

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holdenc
Successful advertising actually makes you _feel_ something. This is just
another example of an uninspired ad stuffed in someone's face.

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saint_lydia
The companies that have the biggest budgets to test placements like this -- at
high CPMs -- are brand advertisers (Gap, Coke, GM etc). Where this product
fails for me is that I don't see a brand advertiser paying money to
deliberately associate their brand with one of the most irritating friction
points on the web.

Tho some do advertise at toll booths:
<http://www.e-470.com/images/plazawrap.jpg> So maybe there's a fool willing to
slap an ad anywhere it will stick.

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emanuer
I imagine the sign-up rate for those sites will decrease for lets say 80%
because every AdBlock user will not be able to see the Captcha. But I don't
really know how this would work...

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jheriko
Forcing people to write the ad contents is a pretty big step from passively
displaying ads - by having to write it out you are forced to think about it on
some level, rather than being able to ignore it if you choose. Its going to
have some subconscious impact at the least - which I makes the whole idea
ethically questionable to me. Mild brainwashing is brainwashing all the
same...

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wherespaul
@hristov I'm sure if you get creative you can come up with ways to have "an
enormous number" of captcha's. If you take the Dish Network example you could
say "what is quoted text" + this "number". That just one example that comes to
mind. @paraschopra I think you have a good point my mind set is annoyed when I
have to fill out a captcha.

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AndrewWarner
The original article: [http://www.techi.com/2010/04/captcha-advertising-
coming-soon...](http://www.techi.com/2010/04/captcha-advertising-coming-soon-
to-a-website-near-you/)

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lhorie
Reminds me of when companies use the skill testing question required by law
for prize-winning promotions to self-promote. I'm not sure this would be as
effective for non-household-names though.

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Colin-DeVries
I would feel reluctant to use 3th party services like e.g. recaptcha or the
example mentioned on a business website because I have a feeling it might come
across as unprofessional.

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paraschopra
I don't think this is ever going to work. While solving captchas, people are
in different mental mode than while looking at ads.

~~~
jhuckestein
A different mode while looking at ads? What is "ad mode" then? Doing the
dishes while ads are on TV?

Ads work on a subconscious level :)

~~~
paraschopra
I don't think you an ad playing on TV makes any sense if you are playing
sudoku at the same time.

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dstik
This is a great idea, advertising/monetization meeting spam prevention.

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bseo
Some links I've gathered on the subject: <http://www.blackhat-
seo.com/2010/captcha-advertising/>

I found 4 companies that are currently providing some kind of captcha
advertising. It's an old idea that is being rediscovered from time to time.

I don't think you need an enormous amount of words/slogans/phrases. You can
use different non-linear transformations on your content, different fonts,
different layouts and so on. You can also fall back on a regular captcha,
either for effectiveness or to not annoy users too much.

