Let’s face it — digital advertising is beyond screwed up. Many sites, particularly news websites, have become slow and downright unusable due to pop-ups and stupid videos you don’t want to watch. Companies which depend on those ads for revenue are now losing that revenue due to ad blockers, and advertisers are in turn losing money not only due to blocked ads, but rampant ad fraud which has unfortunately become so common. Clearly this downward spiral cannot continue. Luckily the team behind Basic Attention Token (BAT) has an ingenious solution. Today we’ll explain why our next Coin of the Week represents a revolutionary change in the evolution of digital advertising, and how you can get your hands on some BAT before it is listed on Coinbase.

What is Basic Attention Token (BAT), and What Problem Does it Solve?

BAT is a project that is built on the Ethereum blockchain which aims to address the pain points of the three major participants in the modern digital advertising ecosystem:

1) Users– the audience at which the advertisement is aimed.

2) Publishers– the company/platform which presents the ad to the Viewers (i.e., a website).

3) Advertisers– the party which creates the ad, and pays to place on it on the Publisher’s medium, in hopes of getting Users to make a purchase.

In order to understand the problem BAT is solving, let’s explore how digital advertising currently works. To put it simply, Publishers collect personal information on Users when they visit their website. They use this data to provide targeted ads (created and paid for by Advertisers) to Users. The revenue generated by this is what keeps the Publisher in business, since Users have been conditioned over the years to expect most content on the web to be free or close to free.

Sounds pretty simple right? So what’s the problem?

Well it turns out, this system does not work in reality nearly as well it does on paper. Over the years, Users have simply become numb to online ads; there is just so much noise out there that it is hard to get clicks because Users just ignore them. This has led Advertisers to double down and create increasingly obnoxious “clickbait” ads designed to seize Users’ attention by making their ads harder to ignore. Instead, Users have retaliated by installing ad blockers in their browsers to rid themselves of this annoyance, and that means less money for Advertisers.

Publishers arguably get the worst end of the deal; some are irritated that they have to let Advertisers keep putting this kind of content on their platforms, but some feel they have no choice because, in many cases, it is the only way to remain solvent. But ads which ruin the User experience damage the Publisher’s reputation, and Users leave and don’t come back. Ads become less effective so Advertisers don’t want to pay for them, since their ROI keeps going down (this is also in part due to ad fraud, which has grown into is a multibillion-dollar problem).

And oh yeah– it turns out that Users don’t like having all that personal information about them collected either. Many consider it a rampant invasion of privacy, and as recent regulations like the GDPR have shown, people and governments alike have simply had enough.

As it stands right now, this is a 3-way, lose-lose-lose scenario with no end in sight. But Basic Attention Token may offer the solution.

How Basic Attention Token (BAT) Works

How BAT helps everyone involved in digital advertising

BAT is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that uses the Brave web browser to fundamentally change the relationship between Users, Publishers and Advertisers for the better.

Brave has privacy protection and ad-blocking features built right in, so mass collection of private data goes out the window. It does however capture information about user behavior in an anonymous way, and records it in a ledger which can be used for targeted advertising. With the Brave browser, users choose to opt into receiving certain kinds of ads. In return for giving their attention to the ad (a video, a pop up, a landing page, etc.), they are rewarded with Basic Attention Tokens– hence the name.

That’s really what the goal of this project is; to monetize the attention Users give to advertising itself. Users receive fewer ads, but they are more likely to be receptive to them, since they chose to opt in. Publishers receive BAT based on User attention, and since the User experience is much better, revenues go up. Advertisers benefit by getting better data about their customers, higher ROI, and reduction in ad fraud. As the BAT network continues to evolve, more sophisticated uses for tokenization can be developed to match all the forms that digital advertising can take.

BAT solves a real problem, and its white paper has a transparent and clear presentation of how they intend to solve it. They also frankly acknowledge the pros and cons of their competitors in their white paper, which is refreshing, since so many white papers act as if their project is the only one in existence that is attempting to solve a given problem.

The project also has some incredible talent behind it, most notably Brendan Eich, former CEO and Co-Founder of Mozilla. Oh yeah- he invented JavaScript too. Kind of a big deal, if you ask us.

Simply put, in a crypto world awash with poorly devised ICOs and outright scams, BAT has all the signs of being a legitimate, credible project offering a real solution.

Price Performance & The Best Way to Get $BAT Before it is Listed on Coinbase

BAT has had an impressive history in terms of performance. During their ICO last year, the project raised an astounding $35 million in only 30 seconds. BAT was listed in exchanges shortly after, offering those initial investors a return on investment of nearly 600% in under a week.

After briefly surpassing $0.86 USD during the December/January bull run, BAT endured a correction to around $0.19–0.25 USD, where it has hovered for most of the summer. However, the recent announcement that Coinbase is exploring the possibility of listing BAT has sent the price rising once again, and it currently sits at around $0.34 USD.

Coinbase drives the crypto market to a large extent. It is how millions of people get started with cryptocurrency for the first time, and it is simple a fact that any project which is listed on there is going to go up, if for no other reason that it is now far more accessible to a larger group of customers. Needless to say, if BAT gets listed, this is a big, BIG deal.

Will BAT match or surpass its previous ATH of $0.86 USD if it is listed on Coinbase? We can’t predict the future with 100% certainty, but if it is listed, then it’s a safe bet that this will indeed happen over time. If you want to make the most of this opportunity however, you are better off adding some BAT to your portfolio BEFORE it gets listed.

Faast is the easiest, simplest and least stressful way to take a position in BAT. Just enter your ethereum wallet addresses or connect your wallet directly to our simple user interface, and you can instantly swap BTC, ETH, or 100+ altcoins for BAT in just seconds. Your coins stay safe in your wallet, and you never have to trust your private keys to a third party.

It just doesn’t get any easier, safer or better than this.