During one of my browsing sessions, I clicked on a link to open a page and boom! Ads all over the place! I exited the page and tried again, but I got the same result. I had to load the page for the third time before it displayed what I was looking for.
I’ve heard people say that three is a lucky number, but I love simplicity. As such, I would like a page to load immediately after I click on a link without being interrupted by irrelevant ads.
Ads have become a regular thing for internet users, and even when we set up specific ad-blockers on our browsers, they sometimes fail to stop the ads.
While most internet users think that ads only interrupt their browsing experience, this isn’t exactly true. Ad pop-ups also cost you money. Statistics show that third-party trackers and ads consume up to 50% of your mobile data, as you can tell when the ads always load quickly first before the content you’re looking for.. And not only that, your phone’s battery life gets affected by up to 21%.
You might be wondering what all of this has to do with a cryptocurrency token?
Now, before we get into what BAT is, as well as its functionalities and how you can earn some, it will be good to get some background knowledge about the platform upon which it runs.
To address the ad problems mentioned earlier, Brian Bondy and Brendan Eich developed the Brave browser. These are some of the brightest minds in the tech space: Brian was a former employee of Khan Academy and Mozilla, while Brendan literally created Javascript and is Mozilla’s co-founder.
To put it in one sentence: Brave is a fast and privacy-first web browser, as well as a blockchain-based digital advertising platform that is restructuring how users, advertisers, and publishers use the internet. Let’s break both of these down.
First, it is a privacy-first browser that actually has adblockers built-in and a few other features that help keep your personal information private. It’s also very fast, up to 3 times faster than other web browsers, mostly because they have a built-in ad blocker that blocks a TON of requests to other domains and resources.
Secondly, the blockchain-advertising part. Publishers of online content earn considerable revenue and advertisers get value for their money, just like how the old traditional ads work, but they aren’t as overwhelming and don’t follow users around the web 24/7. In fact, if you’re viewing any video on the Brave browser, you won’t see Youtube ads, but I as a creator will still earn money because I’m signed up to the creator program and have claimed my account. As a brave user you can select how many ads you want to see, from like 10 per hour to none. We’ll talk later about how using the Brave browser can actually earn YOU money for watching our videos, but if you haven’t already, click that like button… it’s free and rewards our hard work if you’re not already using the Brave browser.
The platform currently has more than 25 million monthly active users coupled with over a million verified publishers. Therefore, we must admit that Brave is taking the internet by storm.
Moving on…
What Is BAT?
BAT is the native utility token of the Brave browser, and BAT is simply an Ethereum token. Its purpose is to provide a better solution to digital advertising using a blockchain model. Traditional advertising focuses on tracking users’ online data and then selling it to the highest bidder or advertiser. Facebook and Google are widely known for this, mostly because they have the most popular products that allow them to track users.
For example, you may have experienced a situation where you visited and exited a particular website. But then, you’re scrolling through your Facebook News Feed, and you see ads from that same company. This is the work of Facebook Pixel, an API installed on websites to save users’ data for future advert purposes. Sometimes you even speak something and then you see an ad for it later, hinting that our devices are probably listening to us.
While this may be helpful to many brands trying to sell their product, it is a serious privacy incursion and one of the reasons why the US Senate has been slamming Facebook with sanctions.
BAT developers, on the other hand, offer a different and user-focused approach to advertising. They measure attention on their browser by tracking users’ attention and engagement on active tabs in real-time. This gives the browser an idea of which ads to show depending on the time spent on specific content. To sum up the utility of BAT in a single sentence, BAT is a token that advertisers pay for attention.
How Does BAT Work?
Basic Attention Token runs hand in hand with the Ethereum blockchain and the Brave browser to facilitate transactions between readers, content creators, and advertisers. This token brings these parties together for a number of reasons.
When content creators publish on their websites (or post a YT video like this one), advertisers offer a number of BATs for ad space on that content, after which they will reach an agreement based on the attention score obtained by measuring users’ engagement. This gets a little more technical and it out of the scope of this video, but it means the ads are more tailored to the users and not to spend the advertiser’s money
This not only ensures that Brave users see well-tailored ads but also improves speed, privacy, and security on the browser. The Brave browser also gives users an option of opting out of ads; however, they can choose to view ads and earn BATs through the Brave Rewards program. In short, if you select to view ads… YOU earn tokens!
With this model, users only view ads that tickle their fancy and get paid for it, and advertisers only show ads to interested consumers. This is a win-win situation as users do not get bugged by irrelevant ads, third-party trackers, or malware, and advertisers save cost as they get billed only when interested users click on their ads.
A distinguishing benefit of using BAT and Brave is the blockchain technology which ensures that users, advertisers, and publishers do not need to depend on external servers. The platform matches ads locally while also offering constant content flow and faster downloads. Someone could hack Facebook’s database and see where you were eating last night, but they can’t do that with Brave’s BAT model.
Summing it all up, advertisers buy Basic Attention Tokens to spend on advertising, and those spent tokens are given to both the users that see the ads and the creators of the content that the ad is shown on. It’s a win-win-win, which is why the Brave logo has 3 sides, one for users, one for creators, and one for the advertisers.
BAT Tokenomics
Now we’ve come to the fun part. I know you may have questions about the profit potentials of investing in BAT, and this is where I’ll answer them. The token currently trades at $0.7 and has a market cap of over $1 billion.
BAT first launched in May 2017 through an ICO where 1 ethereum could buy 6400 BAT tokens. At the time, this meant around $7.8 million worth of Eth bought 1 billion BAT tokens. Another 200 million went to the development fund, and 300 million went to the User Growth Pool. The User Growth Pool is basically advertising funds to get users to download and use Brave.
Basic Attention Token isn’t inflationary, there is a capped supply, so as demand increases, so should the price.
Although the price of BAT hasn’t moved up much in a while, there are certain factors to consider:
The first factor is the project backing it. BAT is supported by the Brave browser, which currently has over 25 million users and 1 million publishers. With the solutions that the browser offers, we will most likely see a wider adoption in the future, which may positively affect the token’s price.
Also, advertisers have welcomed Brave’s approach with open arms, meaning that the browser’s advertising partners will continue to grow as the platform expands. This will mean an increase in ads revenue converted to BAT, helping to boost price growth and stability since the token has a finite supply.
As we end this video, we want to let you know that you can download and try the Brave browser for free with a link in the description below and to be totally transparent, we will actually earn $7.50 in BAT tokens, coming from the user fund. It’s a quick way to support the channel and support a blockchain project.
Thanks for watching, we hope you enjoyed the video, we really hope you learned something, and most of all, we hope to see you in our next video!
