PlatformPlay to monetise NLPCaptcha in India

Launched in December 2011, NLPCaptcha was among the first companies to introduce the concept of captcha advertising in India.

PlatformPlay, the India entry strategists for businesses, has acquired the exclusive monetisation rights for the captcha advertising platform NLPCaptcha. As per the deal, the entire sales of NLPCaptcha inventory will move to PlatformPlay in a phased manner.

Launched in December 2011 by Noida-based Simpli5d Technologies, NLPCaptcha was among the first companies to introduce the concept of captcha advertising in India and its advertiser line-up includes names like Google, Visa, Volkwagen, Toyota, Maruti, Axis Bank, ICICI, SOTC, Lufthansa, BlackBerry, HUL and P&G.

Captcha stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computefsu Communicationrs and Humans Apart." Captchas are implemented to protect users from robot spam. Captcha advertisements are creative ads where advertisers run ads in place of captchas and the user has to read or see that entire ad to solve that captcha.

Users are shown the brand image that displays a line of text which must be entered correctly in order to proceed. The advertisers submit their ads to a company capable of displaying them (in this case NLP Captcha). Publishers looking to monetise their captcha inventory sign up with that company, and are given a script that places the customised image on select portions of their website. The advertiser then pays the service provider a set amount of cash every time the captcha is successfully filled out, and the publishers in turn receive a cut of what the advertiser pays.

PlatformPlay helps international brands to enter the Indian market and also helps Indian brands to monetise their inventory.

"Innovation is the only way to grow what is otherwise a supply heavy market and therefore an engaging product of this nature, whether through graphical or video, is just what the doctor ordered for demand to increase within the digital eco-system," says Sundaram and adds, "Brands will now get video and other opportunities through captcha, which to me is the next big advertising solution when a consumer is most receptive."

Amit Mittal, co-founder, NLPCaptcha, states, "In the founding year, we mainly focused on two things - educating publishers and advertisers about the unique advantages of using NLPCaptcha and secondly, product enhancements and optimisation. I think that our own sales team has done a fantastic job on the field but still we do realise that we are an ad-tech company and in order to achieve the exponential growth, we should focus on our core business and handover the monetisation part to the right partner. The tie-up with PlatformPlay is a strategic decision and PlatformPlay will now drive the monetisation part of the business while we continue to focus on more innovative product offerings, driving the client side relationship, understanding their needs and expanding to new geographies."

PlatformPlay is Sundaram's second entrepreneurial venture after Networkplay and is backed by Manish Vij and Harish Bahl-led Smile Vun Group.