In today's chaotic, ever-connected, and distraction ridden world, it's getting harder and harder for companies to attract and retain the attention of their potential customers. This has led many marketing departments to go to great lengths and dedicate billions of dollars of marketing budget simply to acquire only a bit of their target user's attention. Alongside the growing costs of launching and managing digital ad campaigns, the user experience has also suffered with slower speeds, and a significant loss of privacy given all of the trackers and data mining (and selling) going on behind the scenes.

A tech visionary and well-known name in the software engineering space has recently took it upon himself to help solve some of these inherent problems and get us back on track towards a better future. Brendan Eich, the creator of the JavaScript programming language and co-founder of the Mozilla project (including the Mozilla browser and Mozzilla Corporation) has recently launched his latest venture, Brave.

Brave is a re-envisioned, open-source web browser that attempts to leverage peer-to-peer networks and economic dynamics to drive an improved, more pleasant, and more profitable way to browse the world wide web. And of course, how can you have P2P these days without having blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Brave is no different, and utilizes an ERC20 token (Ethereum based) called Basic Attention Token or BAT for short, to function as the trade of value within the Brave ecosystem. The project however is not simply just another cryptocurrency. It actually introduces a new advertising and "user attention" paradigm that could turn the behemoth digital marketing industry upside down and even the scales a bit from it's current one-sided state.

The plan is to offer a browser and digital marketplace that focuses on increasing the benefits for three specific stakeholders: the user, the advertiser, and the publisher / content creator. How things work today is that if a company is looking to advertise (advertiser) online, they will work with a large digital platform such as Google to direct their ads to users who fit the suggested criteria for a potential customer. Very simply put, the more views and impressions from the people who "fit the mold", the higher the conversions. This of course does work, but comes at a very high price to Google and requires using many third party servers that can easily clog the network and affect browsing speeds and overall efficiency.

Brave intends to solve these issues by a few systematic shifts in the way attention is valued, earned, and paid for among the three market participants mentioned above.

The User: From the user's perspective, the most important thing is the experience. This is what will drive the most value and garner the highest and most sustainable adoption rates in the long run. One of the most apparent and easily noticeable pieces of this equation is the browsing speed. Brave claims to operate at a 3-7x increase in speed on popular western media and news sites due to the avoided need of loading sluggish and scattered ad data from third party distributed servers.

The Brave browser also enlists a very interesting P2P economic model where users are able to opt-in to ad viewership programs and actually be rewarded through the browser's native cryptocurrency (BAT) for their participation (coming in 2018). This is a form of "ad revenue sharing" and means that users are actually able to earn a profit simply by agreeing to be marketed to and anonymously sharing their data with marketers. This creates a direct incentive for users to engage in an ad filled experience while also creating a marketplace and providing useful info to the advertiser. The Brave browser also features several customization components to give the users even more control of when and what kind of ads they are exposed to.

One of the most important benefits and a component that is often overlooked is the level of privacy and protection around the user's personal data. Brave inherently has no ads and trackers by design, but furthermore also administers an immense amount of privacy tech that not only guard the user's behavior from third parties, but also their identity.

This means that unlike the conventional model where our user data is harvested and sold to the highest bidder, in the Brave environment the user has full control over their browsing information and is able to dictate who they share it with.

The Advertiser: Brave also generates a high amount of value for advertisers on the platform through more sophisticated matching algorithms and a better overall ROI proposition. Brave utilizes a unique localized ad and offer data architecture that actually runs on your device rather than through third party servers (part of the reason the browser is so much faster). So for the users who opt-in to the Brave ad programs, this helps two-fold: it provides a smoother and more streamlined browsing experience, while also tracking and monitoring the user's attention data and intent signals on a much more granular level (active tabs, URL and search keyword entry data, browsing history, etc).

This information is stored locally and inaccessible by any other entities outside of the ad matching software which is also run locally on your device. This detailed level of user data and private monitoring structure results in greater ad effectiveness, leverages machine learning to continuously improve decisions around buying behavior, and also fully regulates the user's information and identity all at the same time.

The Publisher / Content Creator: Brave offers a very intriguing proposition for the content providers with the biggest value stemming from being the recipient of the lion's share of the ad revenues (historically this would go to Google, Facebook, etc.) from advertisers. This makes things very attractive for YouTube, Twitch, or any other online sensations as the earnings potential can be significantly greater broadcasting on Brave's network instead of another browser's main stage. The Brave team has also successfully launched a donation channel known as Brave Payments that allows for an additional revenue stream for publishers and site hosts to take advantage of coming directly from the user base.

By now you probably have a sense of the pivotal role this particular actor plays towards the success of the entire platform. Talented and popular content creators have the ability to introduce hundreds of millions of new users to the browser in a very organic, cost effective, and rapid way should they choose to convert from an alternative platform such as YouTube to Brave. Once the users are here, they will stay for the improved experience, greater privacy control, and the ability to earn a return on their time spent. This adoption then makes things attractive for advertisers who can realize a more attentive audience, improved matching potential with customers, and in the end, higher conversions and higher return on investments.

Although a very exciting proposal, a platform that is trying to disrupt an age old industry and revolutionize the way we browse the web surely will not be easy and the Brave team still has a long road ahead. For starters Brendan and his team, along with the entire Brave community must find their place in a $40.1 Billion dollar Goliath industry, entrenched with very powerful, and long established competitors all going after the same marketing budgets.

On top of that, although Brave possesses a promising technology, a proven team and existing accomplishments, it is still very much in the early stages of it's development and will take some time to fully mature. The browser is currently functional and can be downloaded and used today, but the experience is not quite there for mass adoption and satisfaction. One thing that we have grown very accustomed to in our browsing habits is the customization and convenience we (and our employers) have developed around existing tools and platforms such as Google Chrome. A common annoyance while using the Brave browser is the unfamiliarity of being outside of the Chrome comfort zone and an incompatibility with certain features and services. Many of the plug-ins, extensions, and even a few websites we all recognize and love on Google were non-existent or inaccessible via the Brave browser.

Brave's roadmap is also incomplete, and many of the exciting propositions are still to be released and in the works. This is quite normal however given their age and the "talk before you walk" development culture of the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. The growing pains should soon ware off and before we know it we could be looking at a very powerful contender not only challenging the way we browse the net, but also disrupting the way we think about our attention and what it is worth.

Download Brave: https://brave.com/