The digital advertising industry is fighting commercial battles on multiple fronts. Alongside data privacy violations, the growth of malware infestations, increased demands on data and battery life, and billions of dollars’ worth of bot-fraud, advertisers have been in a constant back-and-forth with ad-blocking software — active users of which are estimated to be between 600 million and 2 billion.

One of the more avant-garde approaches to solving these problems involves an idea that, pre-DLT, had largely been deemed unworkable — paying consumers to watch ads.

‘Digital advertising tokens’ have some of the clearest use cases of any utility token. The most well-known and popular is the Basic Attention Token (BAT) which forms part of Brave’s ecosystem of collaborative technologies.

By valuing and monetizing user-attention, Brave and their Basic Attention Token is able to provide an approach that could circumvent many, if not all, of those digital advertising struggles. Moreover, it appears to offer additional value to advertiser, publisher and consumer. However, after a 2017 ICO that raised a staggering $35 million in 30 seconds (though not without controversy), the token has been facing a rocky road and has failed to reach the lofty heights that were expected of it.

What is the Basic Attention Token?

The Brave browser is fundamental to BAT. Originally an open-source, privacy-focused desktop browser that automatically blocked third-party ads and tracking, in 2019, the Brave browser introduced an opt-in feature, ‘Brave Rewards’, that pays users Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) to view and interact with advertisements.

BAT is an ERC-20 token that utilizes smart-contracts to confirm user-attention — allowing advertisers to verify both target audience and user-engagement without infringing on privacy.

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Each month, BAT is transferred directly either to the recently released, native wallet — the Brave Wallet or to other Ethereum-compatible wallets. Users receive 70% of the tokens they earn with the rest split between advertiser and Brave. Originally, BAT could only be used to purchase vouchers for online retailers. However, a partnership with Uphold, a global digital money playform, now provides users with a way to directly convert it into fiat currencies.

In addition, ‘Brave Payments’ and the decentralized ‘Brave-Micropayment ledger’ provide further in-browser functionality for the cryptocurrency. They empower Brave-browser users with the ability to directly and pseudonymously support content creators with BAT donations, simply by pressing a button on a YouTube video or Tweet. Content creators with a verified Uphold account are then able to convert BAT to fiat and transfer it to their bank accounts — potentially offering a revenue stream for small streamers that overcomes YouTube’s disparaged revenue sharing policy.

How Brave wallet verification will work with Uphold — Source: Brave.com

Other BAT use cases include:

Targeted advertising

Access to premium content providers and higher quality content

Purchase of digital goods

Pay-to-comment, up-vote, and down-vote (designed to reduce the number of abusive comments)

The addition of Brave Rewards, which works on an open-source, zero-knowledge-proof scheme, has not appeared to compromise Brave’s privacy priorities. The browser continues to actively block data collection and tracking. Rather than being shared with advertisers or domains, user data is stored locally and processed via browser-based machine learning in ad catalogs that tailor ad experience based on past behaviour.

Advantages of the Brave Ecosystem:

A direct revenue chain is created between user and publisher. Conjointly, the system creates an incentive structure for all of the primary participants in the advertising model:

The advertiser faces less fraud, is able to target customers effectively, and is able to acquire customer attention at lower costs than in traditional advertising models due to the circumvention of intermediaries — theoretically resulting in greater ROI.

The content creator also benefits from the removal of intermediaries, acquiring new, direct revenue streams no matter the size of their following.

The viewer receives heightened privacy, autonomy, ad relevance, and the ability to earn BAT for surfing the internet.

The Rewards model is ‘opt-in’ and disabled by default.

Removing bandwidth-draining ads allows the Brave browser to be one of the fastest browsers available — they boast of site-loading speeds twice as fast as Chrome’s desktop browser.

The ecosystem offers an alternative digital advertising revenue model which could end Facebook and Google’s duopoly of the industry (combined, the two tech-giants control more than 60% of ad spending).

BAT has acquired noteworthy partnerships with organisations including Uphold, DuckDuckGo and Dow Jones Media.

The core team is experienced and respected, it includes Brian Bondy of Firefox, Evernote and Khan Academy; Brenden Eich, co-creator of JavaScript and the Firefox browser; and Yan Zhu of Yahoo who has featured in Forbes ’30 under 30’.

Because its infrastructure is open-source, developers are free to propose new use cases.

Brave protects user data — browsing histories are kept private using the ANONIZE algorithm. While it does not create true anonymity, it is pseudonymous — it ensures transparency while hiding user identity.

The simplicity of BAT’s mining process and applications potentially gives it broad appeal. Instead of rewarding energy-intensive algorithm-based mining, users simply need to download the browser, enable the rewards function, and interact with some advertisements.

Disadvantages of the Brave Ecosystem:

Brave Ads do not replace standard web ads such as banner ads. Instead, users see them as offers via notifications that open as full-page display ads in new browser tabs. Their system therefore requires a significant reimagining of the workings of an extremely well-established model. For advertisers accustomed to the variety of advertising options available on platforms like Google AdSense, this is inhibitory. Adjusting to this system is a major change that may not become worthwhile unless the value of BAT increases, or their advertising offerings expand.

The success of BAT is inextricably linked to the success of the Brave browser. In spite of some unique advantages, Brave remains a niche browser that faces a David and Goliath scale struggle if it is to seriously compete with the browsers of tech giants Microsoft, Apple and Google. Brave recently reported 20 million downloads and 5.5 million active users. In comparison, Google Chrome reported 2 billion active browsers in 2016.

Its big-tech competitors also benefit from vast economies of scale in the advertising industry. The Brave ecosystem is dwarfed by Google and Facebook’s own industry dominance. Content creators and advertisers are partly drawn to these traditional advertising models due to the sheer number of users they have.

Arguably exacerbating BAT’s scalability concerns, it is not easy to convert BAT into fiat currencies. The Brave Wallet is unidirectional; BAT cannot be transferred out of it. This forces users to go about a time-consuming, sometimes risky, and often costly process of going via a third-party wallet and exchange. The only fee-free method of doing so is currently with escrow payment processor, Uphold. For the non-crypto enthusiast, these extras steps will likely act as a deterrent to adoption.

Users can make BAT micropayments to circumvent ads when accessing high-quality content. Something they may not have had to do using a standard ad-blocker.

In order to achieve crucially needed adoption, Brave offers a referral system to encourage users towards its platform. These sorts of referral schemes tend to bring in low-quality users hoping to acquire quick cash — not the ideal income-generating users that advertisers are targeting. It should be noted that BAT is attempting to stop referral fraud by limiting the amount of ads viewable by any single browser.

Similarly, the system remains theoretically vulnerable to manipulation. Previous enterprises’ attempts to pay users to view ads were exploited. While Brave’s measures to prevent traditional bot fraud appear to be effective, they will need to remain constantly vigilant as both their offering and the techniques of would-be bad actors evolve.

State of Affairs

According to a May 2019 CoinDesk article, Brave are hoping to raise an additional $30–50m in funding — taking their valuation up to $133m. In what their employees optimistically describe as the ‘brave wave’, BAT experienced jumps in value after attaining landmarks over previous months, including after their Brave Wallet announcement, after Wikipedia became a Brave-verified publisher, and after becoming the default web browser for the blockchain phone — HTC Exodus 1. In addition, they have acquired millions of user and publisher registrations.

An analysis from bravenewcoin.com regarding the financial status of BAT “suggests the trend will remain bearish for the indefinite future, with the possibility of a mean reversion back to the 200-day EMA at 3,000 sats”. They claim that while these metrics remain above historic levels, with a circulation of 1 billion BAT, downward pressure is likely unless Brave can acquire a dramatic increase in users, active addresses and daily transaction amounts.

Total Brave Browser Publishers — Source: batgrowth.com

Moving forward, reacquiring and maintaining upward momentum will be vital for BAT. The entire Brave ecosystem must attain more recognition and meaningful adoption if it is to push up BAT value to the levels it needs. While much of BAT’s value will be dependent on general cryptocurrency market fluctuation, they can and are taking steps to independently increase their token value.

One positive announcement is Brave Nightly — a development that aims to end the unidirectional nature of the Brave Wallet. Still in beta testing, it would make it easier for users to withdraw BAT.

Referral scheme concerns aside, one route for increased adoption that Brave is successfully honing-in on is YouTube. BAT gives content creators a revenue stream that operates outside of the dominant model. For small streamers, Brave offers a vital way to benefit from often-devout audiences. YouTube stars carry a lot of weight and their influence should not be underestimated. The last five years’ proliferation of influencer marketing is testament to this fact.

Another burgeoning blockchain market that Brave is hoping to capitalize on is the gaming sector. Projects such as Enjin Coin have been hoping to replace and supplement in-game currencies. Instead of making micro-purchases with in-game or fiat currency, Brave offers a way for gamers to pay for extra features and content by giving their attention to relevant, targeted, and safe advertisements. With game publishers trying to navigate increasingly tough loot-box based gambling regulations and reeling from strong pushback against pay-to-win business models, paying with attention may be a way to quiet discontent in the industry.

While there are rival digital advertising tokens such as Bitclave (CAT) and AdEx (DAI), Brave’s holistic browser-focused system remains largely unique. It shares qualities with other ecosystems such as Reddit Gold, Steem, AdsDax, and Google, and yet none share all of the qualities of blockchain, monetization, rewards and privacy provisions — positioning Brave in a promising situation.

BAT’s ability to provide an alternative to traditional ad-based revenue is one of the clearest use cases of any cryptocurrency — solving a problem that traditional currencies cannot. If the tides of digital advertising turn towards BAT, the token value has the potential to soar. If this happens, Brave could provide the foundations for a complete reimagining of a gigantic industry. Yet to do so, they have an uphill struggle ahead of them.

If you are interested in discovering more about Basic Attention Tokens, they have a selection of earn-as-you-learn video content. blockescence DLT solutions are committed to providing the highest quality, unbiased information and resources from the DLT world. If you found this article useful, don’t forget to clap and share!

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