Looks like AOL has implemented Captcha Product Advertising as part of a spam-prevention initiative. The original captcha was annoying enough – trying to read distorted characters and type them in, usually spending a few attempts before being “rewarded” by whatever action you wanted to achieve in the first place – but these product ads for Captcha seem especially annoying. Ads were one thing when there were on the page and you could ignore them – but forcing your users to interact with them seems a little much. Maybe AOL is just going down hill fast and is trying for any extra revenue they can get – seems to be a little over the line though.
Original Captcha example:
And with the AOL logo:
