Peter Kafka at All Things Digital’s MediaMemo is reporting about a startup focused on advertising from the CAPTCHA. Solve Media aims to take a web element, which already requires user attention (the CAPTCHA) and monetize it through advertising. 

It’s really not a bad idea, but it’s not exactly a new one either. We’ve seen examples of this in the past, though I can’t honestly say I’ve encountered it much in everyday web browsing. 

Last year, Microsoft  applied for a patent for CAPTCHA advertising. Solve Media itself was talking about the concept months ago, back when it was called Adcopy.com.

Solve Media from Solve Media on Vimeo.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is that we haven’t seen Google do this kind of thing yet. Last year, shortly after Microsoft filed for that patent, Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that provided CAPTCHAs to over 100,000 sites around the web. 

Google had other things in mind with that acquisition, however. This inolved reading and archiving printed materials. That’s not to say it isn’t something that could still happen.