The cryptocurrency-powered Brave browser has recently started trialing its advertising program, which is set to reward users for seeing select ads on the platform, which some believe is going to disrupt the online advertising industry.
The browser, co-founded by former Mozilla co-founder and the creator of JavaScript Brendan Eich, has a built-in cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token (BAT), which users can use to pay publishers, and now to be rewarded for seeing ads.
This according to a recently surfaced page that lets users opt into the Brave Ads Trial Program. The page explains:
“A few relevant ads are presented to you, a few times per day. In exchange for your valuable attention, advertisers pass some of the profits to you. A large sum. 70% actually! Try it now and let us know what you think of the new Brave Ads solution.”
According to BAT’s subreddit, users will receive 70 percent of the revenue from “user ads” which are set to be “delivered directly to the user in a separate ad tab, rather than on publisher content at specific moments in the user’s browsing experience.” Ads that appear on publisher websites – known as “publisher ads” – will reward users with 15 percent of the revenue.
Brave boasts of various advantages over its competitors. It has a built-in adblocker and blocks trackers, which it touts makes the user’s browsing experience up to two times faster on a desktop, and up to eight times faster on mobile devices, while improving privacy.
Notably, opting in to see Brave’s approved ads will, for now, send user’s browsing history to the team behind the browser, which means it may not be an ideal program for those looking to browse privately.
Its advantages have gathered a large following, as according to Eich Brave is getting close to 3 million active users, and has over 15,000 publishers accepting BAT payments every month.
2.8M MAU now, over 400K wallets, 16K pubs of whom 12K are YouTube creators. Settlement via ZKP accounting & one tx/user-month to Uphold who pays fiat or crypto, so no micro-tx flows evident on-chain — as I keep saying, current main chains neither scaled up yet nor anonymous.
— BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) June 17, 2018
As CryptoGlobe reported Brave Software, the company behind the browser, recently partnered with Dow Jones Media Group, which owns publications like the MarketWatch and Barrons, to offer users premium content and test the BAT.
