Advertisers Hope to "CAPTCHA" Your Knowledge

   Just wanted to reiterate the fact that I love marketing and its many facets; however, call it an oxymoron, but I have a love-hate relationship with online advertising. The reasons are many, but mainly that advertising, and data collecting, are increasingly crossing personal boundaries. Personally, I do not appreciate pop-up advertisements, flash players begging to be played (several on one page), or music starting without my permission while I’m browsing. That’s just me. I know it increases product awareness and promotes buying, but damn! My senses cannot take the overstimulation! Combine these surfing nuances with the fact that every website, advertisement, and proverbial click you make is recorded and tracked in order to delve into your personal shopping, buying, and browsing patterns. Yikes- I feel violated! Times have changed- yes, they have. As Stephen King said, “The world has moved on…”
  
   Therefore, while we’ve come to accept the massive amounts of advertising and information collecting that comes with the web, some companies can’t get enough…. Enter CAPTCHA! Yes, even this mere security precaution, which prompts users to type in a quirky array of nonsensical text to prove they are not robots, is under siege of advertisers looking to capitalize in any way possible.
  
   Ticketmaster recently decided to get rid of CAPTCHA, which takes users an approximate average of 14 seconds to solve, for a similar service that asks for well-known phrases, or simple multiple-choice questions, which take about 7 seconds. Similar systems can range from drawing a circle around an object (like unlocking your Smartphone), to puzzles and simple mathematic equations. Unfortunately, some of these systems won’t make the cut. As Mike Wehner of Tech It Up! explains, “Both of these variants allow you to confirm your humanity without deciphering a garbled string of text, but they lack the revenue-generating capability of the ad-based method. And because of this added monetary bonus of the commercial model, both the puzzle and math verification tools have less of a chance of becoming commonplace.”   
  
 So, Ticketmaster is moving into a new realm of verification technology, which no doubt hastens the search process for purchasing tickets online. Rather than typing in CAPTCHA text, visitors would be requested to view an add image (like the picture on the right), or maybe even enumerate a company’s slogan. While I have been annoyed by some CAPTCHA text, I respect what it’s there for, so it’s really no big deal to me the way it is now. Would I appreciate something simpler? Hell yeah! However, I don’t need brands pushed at me constantly. There are so many digital advertising and marketing platforms and channels to reach (and track-never forget tracking- it’s what marketers do) consumers- is this platform necessary for companies to measure brand awareness? Seriously, is there no corner of web untouched?

Again, I’m all for simplifying a cumbersome task, but can we just stick to sentences and shapes- that’s simple!