View Ads, Get BAT: Brave Delivers on ICO Promise of
Paid Web Browsing
Brave’s
promise to compensate you for viewing online ads is finally coming to fruition.
In
a departure from typical display ads embedded on websites, the privacy-minded
web browser is debuting small notifications that aren’t wedded to particular
sites. The notifications, visually akin to those of the Slack desktop app,
feature promotional offers from different brands.
For
users, it’s important to note, the Brave Rewards product is opt-in.
“This
is what we’re excited about because it doesn’t require publisher opt-in,” Brave
CEO Brendan Eich told CoinDesk in an interview. “The main model for us is
advertiser-to-user.”
Describing
the notifications as the “top of the funnel,” Eich explained that if the user
clicks on one, they will be taken to a site with more information about the
given offer.
Users
can still keep using Brave without any kind of ad intervention, but they do
have an incentive to join: Brave promises that 70 percent of the money
companies spend on these ads will go to users (the rest is kept by Brave). The
funds will be paid out to users’ wallets via Brave’s Basic Attention Token
(BAT).
Brave
Ads goes live today
with a number of ad inventory suppliers, including Vice,
Home Chef, ConsenSys, Ternio BlockCard, MyCrypto, eToro, BuySellAds, TAP
Network, The Giving Block, AirSwap, Fluidity and Uphold.
“Brave
is changing the paradigm of digital advertising where consumers are fairly
rewarded for their attention,” Lin Dai, CEO of TAP Network, said in a
statement. TAP brings over 250,000 partner merchants and brands to the new
platform, according to Brave.
