

Ask HN: Why Didn't Captcha Advertising Take Off? - Jakob

The first occurrence as I know of it was back in 2005: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2005/10/captcha-advertising.html<p>There are some companies around it like
  * http://www.adaptcha.com/
  * http://www.captchaad.com/<p>But I've never seen it in the wild. The idea seems intriguing. More accessible to my grand parents and a new way to cram more advertising in web pages = make more money.<p>I haven't seen them in the wild though. Do you know why?
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dragonquest
One of the first problems I see is that supposing you are a webmaster of a
site and 5 companies have approached you to display a fuzzed up logo in you
captcha.

Now since there aren't infinite string variations you are left with randomly
displaying only 5 kinds of verification phrases which are easier to manipulate
once you take into account that colors associated with brand logos are easier
to recognize than actual alphanumeric strings displayed as images.

Also since captcha's are mostly for the benefit of the website/webmaster, they
are seen in an annoying light by consumers who actually use the site. And that
is a strict no-no to any marketing strategy.

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mahmud
Advertisers don't want to associate their brands with annoyance and
inconvenience.

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dkersten
I dont buy that. Theres plenty of intrusive advertisement on the internet
(popup advertisement, advertisement that blocks the page until you close it,
advertisement pages that appear when you click a link and then must click
"skip this ad" or similar).

~~~
mahmud
There is brand-safe advertising, and then there is popup-advertising. Hardly
the same thing.

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jasonlbaptiste
Sometimes God hates ideas so much that he intervenes to make sure that they
never ever happen. This is one of them.

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mr_dbr
More importantly, why hasn't <http://www.thepcspy.com/kittenauth> taken off?

This is more practical (and cuter) than using brand-logos.. Pictures of
kittens and other animals are easy to find, whereas getting a wide enough
range of companies willing to let you use their logos will be far more
difficult.. It would be like having a captcha where there are only 5 possible
strings to enter..

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paulhart
There are patents involved, maybe the licensing costs were too high?

I've been asked to work on something similar, but my lazy/distracted ass
hasn't gotten around to it yet.

