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.