But when I see the tech media oohing about a 3rd Party captcha service that uses ads, I feel I can add something to the discussion.

4 or 5 years ago one of the best though slighly naughty Adsense tricks was to slap a adsense advert right next to the submit button of any forum form. People make mistakes and occasionally click by accident, or at least the ads get seen.
Worst case scenario was you at least got an advert impression.

Microsoft have a patent application for using advertising as part of a captcha from February 2008, as pointed out by Tim when that application was made public a year ago, and he felt he was being squeezed out of the advert captcha market.

Tim’s solution is slightly younger than Microsoft’s patent, launched commercially in December 2008 to existing customers.

However the concept of tying a brand to a captcha goes back at least 5 years to this post.

Your Captcha Adverts In Action

This is what the output from the Captcha Adverts WordPress plugin looks like.

This is what the Microsoft patent shows

This is what the Solve Media captchas look like.

I would hope the Solve Media (pending) patents are related to turning a captcha advert into an advertising network, and not based on a 5 year old concept that isn’t theirs.

Captcha As Part Of Sales Funnel

In practice for many sites captcha adverts are a terrible idea unless they are part of the site’s own sales funnel.

• You don’t or shouldn’t show a captcha to members – you have their email address confirmed
• Many sites are moving over to using a shared comment management system despite the synchronization issues and potential privacy issues. Again a vastly reduced need to use a captcha.
• The primary reason to use a captcha these days is at the time of account signup.
• If your site doesn’t gain tons of comments, a payment based upon completed captcha’s is fairly pointless.

A far better scenario is to use a captcha that is either part of the lead acquisition funnel, or to increase awareness for an advertising message that is shown immediately after the captcha is completed such as a one-time offer.

I am sure there is a value to the advertiser – the problem is for most publishers they should be integrating their own messaging, not 3rd party advertising.

Media Memo state

Playing along so far: Advertisers including Microsoft (MSFT), GE’s (GE) Universal Pictures and Toyota (TM), and publishers including Meredith (MDP), Tribune and AOL (AOL).
AOL is also an investor in the company (previously named AdCopy), via its AOL Ventures arm. Other investors, who have collectively put something like $6 million into the company, include First Round Capital, New Atlantic Ventures and angels like Chris Dixon, Roger Ehrenberg, Aydin Senkut and Shervin Pishevar.

Captchas for users who are not logged in for most media publications should be to enhance lead acquisition.

But how about for logged in users?

Captcha For Logged In Users

Completing a captcha is a one time event that is currently looked on as a barrier, when it could be turned into a reward for interaction.

Imagine members (maybe even non-members) could give answers to questions related to the content or other recent events for a prize, but they could only enter by commenting. Blogs run giveaway competitions all the time which reward entry points for placing a comment, though it isn’t really as scaleable as it could be, and the presentation needs to be refined.

For non-members such a competition could be the first step in a subscription funnel.

More on Techmeme but most of it seems like reworked press releases plus a video using Vimeo (who are not for commercial use)

You could believe his shock, with so many popular tech, web design & SEO blogs being allowed to flaunt the rules.

A couple of months ago I pointed out that Vimeo isn’t for commercial use, but that message seems to be largely ignored.

To me it seems that any large commercial undertaking using Vimeo fits one of the following scenarios:-

1. Walking a tightrope with a demand to take their content down imminent
2. In some barter arrangement for link juice worth far more than any blogger has probably ever received for a paid post – I wonder what the FTC would think? It certainly influences a lot of businesses to use something they shouldn’t
3. Blindly walking a path of ignorance having not checked terms of service before signing up

The most prominent I have seen using Vimeo are Read Write Web, Techcrunch and in the SEO community Seomoz

There are tons of commercial funded startups who use Vimeo on their home pages.

Over the Christmas quiet spell I would suggest taking your videos and links away from Vimeo, and let Vimeo stagnate in a non-commercial world.

I have never really understood why anyone creating public facing videos would use Vimeo anyway, their primary saving grace are their privacy controls which would be ideal for membership sites if not for the commercial use barrier.

Their terms of service mentions it

The signup page mentions it clearly… below the fold it is however very easy to miss.

You could also take a look at their community guidelines

It is just as clear within their FAQ

The only place it isn’t 100% is their page for Vimeo Plus – you would expect if you were paying for the service you would be able to use it commercially.

I like Vimeo, the encoding is high quality and they use a top tier CDN (Bitgravity) so even here in Poland the video is relatively smooth even on a low end ADSL connection.
They also have some cool domain locking features which would make it perfect for the members area of a commercial membership site.

There isn’t any lapse in communication of their commercial terms as can be seen by this recent forum thread.

Either a lot of very high profile sites have somehow been overlooked by Vimeo, or they have some kind of alternative arrangement – I am sure they love the Google juice, but isn’t that then payment in kind for links?
However it is also quite possible they don’t realise that they are breaking the Vimeo terms of service. I have had to point it out multiple times in the last 2 weeks to friends, so I am sure this is a common occurrence.

Ramifications? I know Master New Media had their account deleted and they could easily turn around and send you a huge bandwidth bill or threaten legal action. Vimeo’s parnet company however is IAC… why haven’t they offered a commercial option yet?

I have some posts lined up covering lots of alternatives with various advantages.

What are your favorite video hosts, CDNs and FLV Players?