Well that was new

[firecat]

I just tried to sign up for a newsletter from a publishing company, and I encountered a Captcha. In order to see the text to type, I had to click a Play button. I was then treated to a video advertisement.

I think it's beyond offensive to have to watch an ad in order to prove I'm a human in order to sign up for a newsletter. Am I overreacting? Have I somehow failed to catch up with the new normal as far as advertising encroachment is concerned?

ETA: On further investigation, it appears that the video ad Captcha is associated with feedblitz.com, which is associated with typepad.com, which is where this publisher has its blog. The captcha is provided by http://www.solvemedia.com/ which says:

Our patent-pending technology turns CAPTCHA, those difficult combinations of distorted letters and numbers, into branded TYPE-IN™ ads. Every time a consumer enters a brand message, we share the revenue with our publisher partners.

So it's not the publisher's fault, at least not directly.

Comments

[pulchritude]

I'm pretty sure I've encountered solvemedia captchas before, and noscript blocked the advert. (it blocks youtube adverts as well.)

[firecat]

Yeah, I was using Chrome's ad blocker instead of Noscript in Firefox. I use Noscript for a lot of things, but I hate having to use it on blogs because most blogs have a bazillion scripts and don't work right unless you know exactly which ones to enable.

[pulchritude]

idk, I feel like it's pretty easy to figure out, but of course not everyone would feel the same.