Did I CAPTCHA your attention?

Solve Media from Solve Media on Vimeo.

Suppose you have learned countless insights from your BEM 325 class this semester and you, unable to contain the overflowing of ideas, want to create your own blog full of breathtakingly perceptive blurbs for the entire web to see. You click on the “Sign up” button on Blogger.com and fill in all of your necessary personal information, and then you see it, right above the “Finish” button: That blurry, funky-looking picture box containing a word, phrase, or random combination of letters that is usually skewed or crossed out with a line. Nearly illegible, this word is the only thing standing between you and your web destination. You squint and tilt your head to the left to make out the characters and carefully enter them into the box. Satisfied, you click “Finish” and come face to face with a new blog all to yourself.


What you just experienced is what everyone who has ever registered for a product or service on the internet has encountered. The picture box containing text characters or words is called a CAPTCHA, short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. If the name is not telling enough, CATCHAs serve as a way to prevent computers from mass-registering on members-only websites. To do this, they present an image that only a human could logically interpret. On average, a person spends 14 seconds trying to solve a CAPTCHA.

This is where marketers come in. An agency called Solve Media considered the potential of these 14 seconds of our active attention and how it could be used for companies’ advantage. Brands can pay to have Solve Media create and place CATCHAs containing their brand name or slogan onto various website registration pages. To verify that you are human, you would then be prompted to type the brand or slogan depicted. I like to call these CAPTCHAds. The picture below (courtesy of Bob Gilbreath of MarketingwithMeaning.com) shows what a CAPTCHAd might look like.

No doubt, this new trend has spurred some controversy, specifically the CAPTCHAd that requires a registrant to watch an embedded commercial for Toyota Care and accurately answer a question about it to “pass” the CAPTCHAd. In response to a blog article entitled explaining CAPTCHAds (see it http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/captcha-ads-awesome-brands-awkward-users-132052), there is a controversy brewing. Negative comments included “What's different in such Ads from SPAM? In usual spam, one can ignore or block it, but in captchas the user has no choice” to positive comments like “If it makes it easy to understand the access message, bring it on!” After all, according to the video at the top of this article, having CAPTCHAds saves registrants 7 seconds to complete their signup. However, at the same time, it prevents the ability to opt-out from targeted commercial advertisements, which flirts with some legal issues.
So what does all of this say about consumer behavior? It is two-pronged. On one side, marketers at Solve Media were brilliant in that they were able to spur engagement with a brand through kinetic action. People had to type in the name of a company or its slogan which in turn stimulates memory in the brain, a helpful tool when the same person tries to recall the names or positions of brands in a certain category (think top-of-mind). The other side is that consumers are increasingly becoming more empowered, and the idea of being forced to engage with a blatant advertisement could be viewed as propaganda. In fact, I am a staunch believer in that effective advertising in this day and age should be innovative and interesting so that potential consumers seek it out on their own terms. In this case, the concept of CAPTCHAds is actually a lapse in the consumer-focused progress that marketing has made in the past few years. As clever (and frankly, sneaky) as CAPTCHA advertising is, there must be a better way for marketers to find focused time with potential consumers than a forced confrontation.
One thing that comes to mind is to give registrants the option to replace a CAPTCHA with a short, one-answer questionnaire about a product or brand. Consumers today feel empowered and like to have influence over their environment. If registration included a component where people could either solve out a CAPTCHA or comment on a current event or a brand image, more insight could be taken away. Consider it mini market research. Of course, the response time would have to be significantly comparable to 14 seconds, or the amount of time it would take them if they chose the CAPTCHA option. I can imagine many participatory Generation Y-ers electing to voice their opinions instead of squinting to decipher an impossibly fuzzy box of letters.
Time will tell if CAPTCHA advertising takes off in the coming years, or months. As long as consumers continue to be empowered, the 14 seconds of undivided potential consumer attention can be utilized effectively.

Erin Devine