Well, Captchas are those short tests we have to pass when we want to register to or participate in all kinds of online community platforms such as forums and blogs that require deciphering a captcha test. Captcha comes to prevent automated bots from spamming all kinds of online platforms and websites. Captcha filters robots leaving human users to enjoy the services of certain sites that request Captchas.

Just like in any field, some people found a way to bypass this wall of captcha.
Cptcha can manage bots, preventing them from spamming the web with textual links and other advertising content? No problem.
We’ll hire people to do the captcha tests for others and the spam will continue.

This what “Captcha Bypass” or “Captcha Entry services” means – hiring low paid human workers to carry out captcha tests – to make “captcha entry”.
The worker is paid 1$ for 1100 correct Captcha entries. Some pay more, some pay less, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that human cheap work power replaces the automated spammers or bots by performing repeatedly Captcha bypasses, entering Captcha codes, and contaminating websites with spam!

Just like the old song says: “Money makes the world go around”.

It solves two of the biggest problems of commercial sites:
1) As a Captcha test it verifies the user as human (not machine), meaning it prevents spam and keeps websites secured.
2)  As an Ad Captcha it promotes sales by drawing user’s attention to the product which the captcha content talks about.

This idea is brilliant, indeed. Both the user and the owner of the site might gain advantage of this new innovation.
The user will not have to break his head and torture his eyes while deciphering distorted letters or words, while advertisers will increase impact on the user, promoting sale income, consequently.

Yet, I cannot bring myself not to think about the day when these robots will learn to crack Ad Captchas, as we know that ordinary captchas can be, in some cases, cracked by bots…
When that day arrives – commercial sites will be flooded by robots that will know how to answer the question about the product on the ad, identify it, and pass the Captcha test, but as robots, are far from being influenced by advertising whatsoever.
Let’s hold our fingers and hope that this day will never come.

That’s why advertisements should be creative, whether amusing or shocking, original, funny or sad, the advertiser goal is by no doubt to draw the consumer’s attention. ‘Though this is not easy to achieve, there are plenty of advertisement that do this exactly.
Check the links below and you’ll see it for yourself (all are referring to interesting and creative advertisements):

Creative ads by Tutzone
This blog has collected 34 image advertising of well known brand name products such as Coca Cola and Pepsi. The image ads are pretty witty and amusing, arousing a smile on its beholder.
You can view the ads here.
My rating: 3.5 stars.

Big brands ads by Hongkiat
On Hongkiat you’ll find 12 creative advertisements of famous brand products (Heiniken, Sony, Forbes etc’). Some of them use sex to draw our attention, some use humor, but as we all know- sex wins it all!
Check ads here.
My rating: 5 stars.

Designbeep imaginary ads

Designbeep is a blog dedicated to graphic and web design. It aims to help the design community by supplying photographs and other resources. The ads shown in this post are full of fantasy, colorful and beyond imagination.
Click here to check their imaginary ads.
My rating: 4 stars.

Designswan with war ads

This post by designswan analyzes interesting advertisements.
On this example you’ll find “interesting War Ads”.
Mmmmm…
My rating: 3 stars
(=no ads war can get more than 3 stars and even that is a crime!)

Loqu ads in motion
This one shows great ads – all are bus advertisements (the ads are not about buses, they are presented on buses).
One must pray that no one will watch these creative ads for too long, as we talk on buses on move, on highways and local roads, and yet…
My rating: 4 stars.

Cashmenow condom ads
This post is my favorite one, and not because of my never ending desire for you-know-what. These condom advertisements were made by a Chinese advertising company and they are really good. The creativity and originality can be found on the fact that the ads are based upon well known ads from other fields (Mc’donalds, Nike and others) and still – I think they are creative enough to make me stare at them and smile for more than a second, and that’s a lot!!!
My rating: 5 stars.

when saying “emergence” we mean “the ability to visually gather fragmentary bits and synthesize them – often without color clues or clear boundaries – into simple objects, such as a rabbit or a dog”.

Too bad there was no example of this emerging figures test as I am surely would like to test my own ability of this new image recognition test.

This is a real funny video I found on Youtube.
It describes the difficulties of enjoying the online sphere because of Captcha tests…

Captcha is a small security image of distorted letters, and/or numbers, that is supposed to be copied by users in order to distinguish them (human users) from computers so the unwanted bots could be filtered out.

How can you use Captcha on your site?
You can buy captchas or get it for free, using an open source Captcha.

Following is a small list of Open Sources Captchas,
free resources for Captcha creation and/or implementation:

“Simple Captcha” is an open source Java  implementation for creating Captchas.  It gives assistance in generating good looking Captchas with a minimum of programming and little configuration.

JCaptcha is another open source Java framework for Captcha integration and definition.

“Securimage” is an open source Captcha script, for creating complex  images and Captcha codes. It can be easily added to an existing form on the website, and can run on most web servers as long as you have PHP installed. It generates Captcha images, it validates the typed codes, audible codes, it does everything!

“Joomla” is an open source CMS that has free Captcha plugins.

Plone Captcha is a free service for Plone captchas implementation for validating human input in online forms.

Do you know the difference between an ordinary captcha and captcha advertising?
The answer is simple – advertising captcha, just as the two words imply, is a combination of an ad and a captcha.

For those who are not familiar with the term, Captcha is a short test made of an image with distorted letters and / or numbers that has to be deciphered and than copied by the user before taking specific action, such as website registration, adding a comment and so on.
This is a popular way to detect spam bots and prevent them from abusing websites and online platforms.

Ad captcha is another way of using captcha for the same purpose, but instead of an image it uses an ad, by which 2 goals are achieved:
First, we have a captcha that filters and stops robots from abusing all kinds of online platforms.
Second, businesses get to advertise and brand their selves by using the captcha phrase and by that increasing their revenues or potential clients.

How does captcha advertising work?

A user starts some registration process. After filling out private details, instead of a captcha image – he sees an ad. The various of ads can be flash ads, banners, or video clips. The user gets a question that refers to the ad for which he has to figure out the correct answer (and type it, of course). The correct answer is used as a captcha verification.
The question might be something like: “what’s the name of the product in the ad”?

How do captcha ads promote sales?

While ordinary advertising might be ignored by innocent users, captcha advertising definitely could not be disregarded. Why? The user who reads the question related to the ad (the product / the business) must look at the ad in order to answer the question. He is obliged to think for some seconds about the answer (again – the product / business). He must type the answer (an additional step of referring to the product). And so, without further thinking, his attention is drawn to the product that appears in the ad…

What a psychological impact on the innocent user!!!

So what is this dream captcha?
Just like a dream catcher, which supposes to assure you a good night (or afternoon) sleep, only this one has a captcha code on it.
The artist who created the dream captcha says “that one use of Captcha is to protect a website’s identity” and that he decided to create it because of his interest to understand how the internet affects his life and more specifically his identity.

Living in the digital world of 2010 I must say that I don’t find it weird at all. Anything can happen, including nightmares to be demanded to pass a captcha test in order to get into people’s head…

Some of them, like the “Web Biz Captcha” and “Lanap Software” for example, offer free upgrade versions for life.
You may always try it for free before buying!

More than that, there is always the possibility of using Open Source Captcha, a recommended way of saving money…