What's your basic attention worth? To the father of the Javasript Programming language and co-founder of the Mozilla Project, Brendan Eich, a whole lot more than it currently receives. If Eich had his way, we'd all opt-in to internet advertising that was user-considerate, privacy-centric, not disruptive of quick page loads and, most of all, paid you for your time and attention.

Looks like Eich will be getting his way with the release of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), coming soon to the Brave Browser.

BATs will be distributed, issued and collected via Brave Browser, but what the heck is that?

What's Brave Browser?

From the folks over at Basic Attention Token:

Brave is a fast, open source, privacy-focused browser that blocks malvertisements, trackers, and contains a ledger system that anonymously captures user attention to accurately reward publishers.

It was developed by Brave Software and founded by Brian Bondy and Brendan Eich and it is the bedrock that may help launch Smart Advertising using the smart money BATs, built on Ethereum.

Brave browser is built to block advertisements and, when BAT launches, will have a unique twist for those who choose to opt-in to advertising.

The deal looks something like this:



How It Works

If you choose not to opt-in to advertising then the Brave Browser allows you to surf the web while blocking ads. Cool, but not altogether unique from other products currently on the market that enable this functionality. But if you're focused on privacy this may be the browser for you.

The real opportunity is if you opt-in.

If you opt-in to advertising, the Brave Browser gathers data about your browsing and develops Basic Attention Metrics (BAMs!) that can then be sold programmatically by publishers to advertisers in the BATs ecosystem. So all of your interests on the net can be monetized into a BAM profile or demographic package without the publishers or advertisers ever having a chance to get your personal information on any level outside of device, interest, and attention profile.

This is a simplification of the advertising industry in a revolutionary way.

What about privacy?

Perhaps the only silver-lining to come out of the recent US decision to allow ISP's to collect and sell your information without consent is the fact that everyone agrees: your information is very very valuable. The simple act of paying attention to something is a valuable commodity to a marketplace that wants to sell you everything. Metrics are widely collected by all companies. The only ones that rarely benefit are the consumers themselves.

But if you wouldn't mind opting in to receive targeted ads that are relevant and pay you for allowing them space in your existence, then this is a way to share in the monetization of your interests.

Think of the current Digital Advertising Industry like the above - crowded with middle-people who each want a slice of the value of your attention

Can Brave and BATs change the Digital Advertising space?

I remember back in the day when all you had as far as search engine was basically Netscape Navigator and Alta Vista. After just a short while using it I couldn't imagine using anything else. That's what it's like today when we launch chrome or safari and google search our vacation plans or shop for items. It's hard to let go of what we're comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that change doesn't come.

Adoption of a new browser is a hard sell, especially for novice internet users who have grown accustomed to how they consume their preferred content. But with the groundwork laid by Bitcoin and the coming changes promised by projects like Ripple and Dash Evolution, the smart money would be to bet on the smart money. People are only going to get more used to crypto, not less.

The current Digital Advertising industry is modeled largely on the TV advertising model, not because it's the most efficient but because it already existed. The pivot to digital is happening now in a large way across all publishers, with Real-Time Buying and Programmatic operations coming online to help automate the digital buying process.

Steemit has shown that basic attention can be harnessed by the individual and monetized accordingly. The Whitepaper for BAT even mentions Steemit as a platform that employs blockchain technology but is not involved in digital advertising. There are essentially no real competitors for a concept like this, which means that BATs could ultimately be the catalyst that changes how we engage with the internet and how our attention is rewarded.

There is no clear date for the crowdsale of BAT, but according to their website users will be able to use ETH to participate in the crowdsale.

As a Digital Advertising Operations Specialist I can tell you that the industry is inundated with "solutions" for how to increase ROI for advertisers, increase revenue for Publishers, or increase User-experience for consumers. Add to that the variety of ad servers available for use and you get a chaotic environment that is plagued by fraud and inefficiency.

A simplistic solution like Brave + BATs is destined come along and forever change the Digital Ad Industry, and with founders including the man who created the Javascript Programming Language and Mozilla, it may be as soon as this year.

What do you think of Brave Browser and BATs?

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