A Brave New World For Advertising?

The Basic Attention Token, a new digital token could change the way users, publishers and advertisers interact with adverts, a well needed change since AdBlock Plus has been downloaded over 500 million times, and Adblocking will cost publishers a $27B by 2020.

What is the Basic Attention Token?

It is a utility token which can be used by publishers, advertisers and users on the Brave browser.

Use cases include:

• Users receiving BAT's for viewing an advert

• Spending BAT's on premium products

• Donating BAT's to publishers etc.

Brave Browser

Brave is a web browser with a built in ad blocking system, its creators claim that Brave to run up to 7x times faster than regular browsers due to the removal of adverts which can slow down web page loading speed. Users will be able to opt-in to run ads on the browser and receive BAT’s in return for their attention.

Why I think this could work

Rewarding people for viewing adverts could prove successful on the Brave browser, it has already been used in mobile gaming apps and I believe that as long as there is a good use for the BAT tokens then users will happily spend time watching ads to earn some BATs.

Take Bitcoin Billionaire for example

You can watch ads to double coin rewards or earn coins

Or you can enable less intrusive banner ads for coin rewards

You can then spend the coins on investments that increase bitcoin generation and upgrades that include house decorations and stronger bitcoin miners.

Personally I always took the opportunity to watch and enable as many ads as possible since I was being rewarded with virtual coins which served a purpose inside the game.

Is BAT a good investment?

Before I answer that question firstly, BAT’s are not intended to be a cryptocurrency or store of value. However if the Brave team can create some interesting uses for the BAT (movie streaming, subscription services similar to Netflix, Spotify or Patreon etc.) that could generate a lot of demand leading users to try and acquire BAT through viewing adds, creating content or purchasing them from exchanges.

The Brave team has made mention of the possibility of BAT’s being used on browsers other than Brave as well as being used on Ethereum based messaging/payment platforms such as CoinBase's Toshi (formerly named Token) and Status, other possible use cases include WeChat and Telegram.

Let’s not also forget that Brendan Eich, the creator of Javascript and co-founder of the Mozilla Corporation is the man behind the Brave browser and its Basic Attention Token, so this project is definitely worth watching long term.

I believe the Basic Attention Token is worth a small investment at its current price of $0.11 or you can wait for a lower entry point as the price has been steadily dropping.

Will we be seeing any Basic Attention Token Millionaires some day? Only time will tell

Sources:

AdBlock Plus has been downloaded over 500 million times

https://adblockplus.org/blog/decadblock-adblock-plus-turns-10

Adblocking will cost publishers a $27B by 2020: Study

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/11/adblocking-will-cost-publishers-a-27b-by-2020-study.html

What do BATs represent?

https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq#representation

Where will BAT be used?

https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq#where-used