CAPTCHA advertsing (almost) in action: this Wordpress plug-in installed on some blog just served me a brand name. Do you see a business potential here? Have a CAPTCHA service that sells word placement to businesses, tracks actual usage, and splits revenue with publishers.
Interesting idea. I think this could potentially work if you had an option to click on the Captcha (and go to the brand's home page).
ReplyDeleteCouldn't be tricky though. Like the potential this has but it needs to be done right in order to be successful.
I'd also use logos instead of characters to make automatic recognition harder.
ReplyDeleteNot a new idea. Search 'brand captcha'. Has limitations too -- the security is significantly compromised by a smaller number of possible answers.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if brands would think about the slightly-annoyed state of mind people are often in when they have to fill these in as an extra step to submitting a form? I would much prefer these necessary evils to be used for a good cause, a la reCAPTCHA's digitizing books...
ReplyDelete@anonymous -- when you google 'brand captcha', the first thing that pops up is an old post from this blog. To address the security issue, you'd mix paid brand mentions into a larger dictionary.
ReplyDelete@johanna -- I think people are slightly annoyed when they see any other kind of advertising anyway :)
This is a really neat idea but does not seem viable. Definitely seems like there would be a potential security compromise when you run out of advertisers or brand names. I do like the idea of being able to link to the site from the captcha though.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a touché if I ever read one ;)
ReplyDeleteI guess if it's a necessary evil, and they'll be filling one in anyway, it might not be as intrusive as if a poster bluetoothed something to your phone while you were walking down the street. And who cares if it's "ikea" vs "jlke prole" or something. hmmmm.
This is really interesting-- even without the option of clicking on the captcha to go to the brand's homepage, it'll be really easy to measure impressions since it will have to be typed correctly for the comment to be posted (or whatever the captcha is for). It's certainly a good way to get your brand in someone's head.
ReplyDelete