Industry Media Website solvemedia.com Parent organization Adiant | Headquarters New York, New York Founded 2009 | |
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Solve Media (An Adiant Company) is a privately held CAPTCHA service specializing in challenging users to prove they are human by having them type in the text of an advertiser's brand name which they are calling type-in advertising. The user challenge is for skippable pre-roll advertising in which the user is given the option to type in an slogan of the current advertiser in order to stop the advertisement that would normally play before the content is allowed to start. Advertisers only pay if the user watches the first 30 seconds or more of advertising, foregoing the pre-roll skip challenge. On YouTube, where this is being tried, a range of 20 to 70% with an average 30% of users allow the advertisement to continue entirely even when given the option to skip it with a CAPTCHA challenge.
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Founded in 2009 by Ari Jacoby, Todd Lieberman, Stu Libby, and Jeff Weisberg Solve Media is currently implemented on almost 7,000 publishers including Meredith Corporation websites, AOL.com, and Bauer Media Group Websites. In late July 2011, Solve Media was serving 620,000 CAPTCHAs per day. In September 2013, Solve Media served an estimated 230 million CAPTCHAs per month. The company is headquartered in New York City and Philadelphia, with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and London.
In September 2012, a study done on their network found that 10% of online traffic comes from bots.
Funding
Solve Media has gone through three major rounds of funding, the latest of which raised $6M. Investors include First Round Capital, New Atlantic Ventures, AOL Ventures, Bullpen Capital, and several others. Solve Media raised $16 million in total before being acquired by Adiant.
Application
Solve Media CAPTCHA APIs are available in Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and ASP.NET. Plug-ins are also available for WordPress, Drupal, vBulletin, phpBB, and more.
2012 Summer Olympics
In July 2012, Solve Media announced its sponsorship of American weightlifter Sarah Robles and archer Brady Ellison for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Mobile
In June 2013, Solve Media optimized its "type-in" CAPTCHA product for mobile applications and mobile web. The launch also revealed a partnership with Songza and Unilever.
Acquired
Solve Media's advertising business unit was acquired by Adiant in an all-cash deal