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Genius Marketing Idea - monetizing a CAPTCHA

By sjr4x4 : Administrator

Published 29th September 2010 |

Read latest comment - 30th September 2010

I think this is great, a startup company has come up with the idea of monetizing a CAPTCHA

You know, that annoying phrase that you have to fill in when you register on a site, but stops all the unwanted spammers.

In this new version, the captcha is the advert, with quoted text that you have to enter, see the link to an example image below.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2010/09/solve-captcha-example.jpg

Ok, so its no good for clicks and conversions, but its a great potential branding exercise, or at least I think so

Solve Media Claims It Can Turn Unreadable Captchas into Ad Generators | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

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sjr4x4 : Administrator
29th September 2010 2:23 PM

Stavros pinged me and loves this idea, but has asked me to create a poll to get an idea of what anyone else thinks, just to see if this is something worth implementing

Poll created!

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maxh
29th September 2010 2:28 PM

Hidden CAPTCHA would kill this, and I imagine most websites will begin to use hidden CAPTCHA

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Stavros : Entrepreneur
29th September 2010 2:28 PM

My vote has been cast and I think it is a great idea.

I would rather look an a easy to read picture with some text on it then those stupid squiggly lines and deformed text.

I am not fussed about what it is as long as it works.

Stavros

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sjr4x4 : Administrator
29th September 2010 2:43 PM

Originally Posted by maxh

“Hidden CAPTCHA would kill this, and I imagine most websites will begin to use hidden CAPTCHA”

Interesting, never come across a hidden captcha.

So a user doesn't see it, but a bot or script does, and if its filled in, any further progress is blocked?

Like the sound of it, do you utilise these yourself, and if so do they work?

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maxh
29th September 2010 2:50 PM

Originally Posted by sjr4x4

“Interesting, never come across a hidden captcha.

So a user doesn't see it, but a bot or script does, and if its filled in, any further progress is blocked?

Like the sound of it, do you utilise these yourself, and if so do they work?”

Essentially yes, it's on forms and is hidden from normal users, but robots/scripts etc can see it and try to fill it in.

view-source:Quote Builder | Fridays Property Lawyers

Line 299 (best viewed in Chrome)

I think it actually only shows it to untrusted users, so perhaps users that fill in the form too fast, or come from certain IP's.. I'm not a proper techy so not sure!

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Stavros : Entrepreneur
29th September 2010 3:03 PM

I get the tech behind it
bot reads the field
writes to it and gets dropped

but what if you have a high volume site so mr human spam person logs on compares the bot logs against his own eyes and clocks the lack of any field???
surely they can then just let the bot spam away omitting the field.

Hmm I will have to have a research on this one.

Stavros

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indizine : Forum Moderator
30th September 2010 7:43 PM

Many people have trouble following the simplest of instructions. In the example in the link, how many folk do you think will try and type 'internet explorer 8' instead of 'safer browsing' ? Loads I reckon!

indizine
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sjr4x4 : Administrator
30th September 2010 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by indizine

“Many people have trouble following the simplest of instructions. In the example in the link, how many folk do you think will try and type 'internet explorer 8' instead of 'safer browsing' ? Loads I reckon!

”

hmm fair point, suppose it could end up as a support nightmare, or lost conversions

Be interesting to see if it takes off, (or if stavros implements it

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