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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 ;)
The referenced article claims the startup in question is singular.
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).
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).
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 captc…
in any case of mis spelling or page refresh this could be a problem to generated new ads slogan.
The possible solutions is to generated original captcha if the impression cycle of the ads is running out
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.
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 captc…
The area around your captcha will be getting eyeballs, it's not a bad idea to use that space to pass a message to your users. Ad blindness is always an issue but that's why changing the way you present your promotional content, every now and then, is a good idea.
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.
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 (a…
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.
