Software giant Microsoft has come up with a wizard wheeze
which uses Captchas to deliver adverts. According to a recently announced patent Microsoft will
replace ordinary CAPTCHAs with images, slogans, musical jingles, or other
information related to a particular product.
To prove you are human, and gain access to the other side
of the sponsored CAPTCHA, the user will have to type in the name of the
featured product or other related text.
The Patent says that unlike so much web-based advertising
that accompanies popular web portals such as search and news sites that users
can easily ignore, here the user must actively engage in reading and
understanding the content in the advertisement in the HIP (human interactive
proof) challenge in order to identify the solution to the challenge.
In otherwords if we can make the advertising annoying
enough it will really help the sale of products. Not sure if this logic holds
really.
How many Captchas do you fill in a day? Yesterday I did
five. That is five annoying adverts for products that I don't care about and
don't want, that I would have to sit through. It would also be five products I
would actively not buy.