BAT Offers New Advertising Model
In the past, advertisements were made with street leaflets, but there was a transition to billboards and televisions. But it’s a little different now. We see that the advertising industry is making the transition to Digital Advertising. We have search engine giants like Google and social media platforms like Facebook. Facebook has more than 2 billion users. That’s about 30% of the world’s population. Therefore, advertisers and marketers have flocked to social media and used various methods to determine their target audience. Digital advertising has become so lucrative that in 2017, its total return surpassed that of television advertising.
In 2016, Google was the largest buyer of global ad revenue, raising $79 billion, while Facebook also generated a staggering $27 billion.
However, the thing about Digital Marketing is that it takes quite a lot of hits and is not attractive enough to grab someone’s attention. Most of them are extremely vague and consist of annoying pop-ups that no one clicks on anyway.
Before we go any further and show you how bad the current situation is, you should know the general hierarchical structure of the digital advertising industry.
There are three major players in the system
Imagine that you open Youtube to watch a video and before that video starts, an ad pops up. In this context, you are the video viewer, that is, the user. The person whose video you want to watch is the publisher, and the person who created the ad is the advertiser. In this dynamic, the user is interested in the publisher’s content, is in the same business as the advertiser publisher, and wants to target you with the content.
Now, in this whole dynamic, the advertiser is selling his product and the advertiser is taking his commission from the publisher. But what motivates users to watch ads in the first place? Of course, you could say that users get free content and may eventually come across something they like. However, users don’t like watching ads, so they’ll probably skip it if given a chance.
Dishonest Platforms
Besides users, advertisers, and publishers, there’s another player in this ecosystem that we haven’t mentioned yet: the platform. In our example above, Youtube is a platform. To maximize users’ interest and make sure they’re watching the ads they’re interested in, these platforms have taken their games to another dimension. They began investigating their users’ private data and internet searches, and handed over the data to behavioral scientists.
Using this research, they were able to fine-tune and direct specific ads to the user’s needs. Combining machine language and artificial intelligence, these platforms have shown exactly what you want to see. That’s exactly what happens when you search for “best hotels in Brazil” on Google and your Facebook page is filled with beautiful Brazilian hotels.
A company can analyze the behavior of its customers, but this becomes problematic when it sells the data to another company. Now why is this so unethical?
Literally, users’ privacy is being violated. The data that the user may have given willingly or unintentionally is given to the other party. The user’s interests, likes and dislikes are given on a silver platter. In fact, this issue was on the agenda (in writing) until very recently.
Do you know what we’re getting at?
Facebook Trial
Yes. The collapse of Facebook.
We are sure that you are already familiar with the story. Facebook has been accused of selling consumer data to Cambridge Analytica. What did Analytica do with this data? This data will allow the public to participate in Brexit, US elections, etc. It turned out that it was used to shape on various political decisions.
This is where a line needs to be drawn. We cannot allow anyone to use a user’s private data for use by anyone else. After all, such irresponsible behavior from platforms does not suit advertisers, users or publishers.
Users have no real incentive to watch any ads, and the platforms receive most of the revenue generated from publishers and advertisers.
This is the reason why blockchain technology has been integrated into the digital advertising industry. It connects publishers and advertisers directly to consumers without any intermediaries, bringing transparency, privacy, decentralization, and honesty.
What is a Basic Attention Token (BAT)?
BAT stands for Basic Attention Token; It is a digital advertising token built on the Ethereum blockchain. The goal of the BAT token is to create an ad exchange marketplace that will connect advertisers, publishers, and users in a decentralized manner. The goal of BAT is to monetize the user’s attention and eliminate all unnecessary expenses associated with ad networks.
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) deals with:
- It serves as a unit of exchange, eliminating intermediaries.
- It rewards users, publishers, and advertisers.
- Users get paid for paying attention to ads.
- Publishers normally receive a portion of their advertising revenue.
- Advertisers get a better return on investment for their content.
The BAT team created Brave, an in-house native scanner integrated with the Basic Attention system. BAT tokens are the local currency to be used by the system.
Brave is based on a “stealth and speed” created by the BAT team. Brave blocks all unnecessary ads and trackers by default. Unlike most ad blockers, Brave blocks all ads without any bias. In a test for Brave.com it was observed that Amazon blocked 7 ads and trackers within a few seconds of opening it with Brave.
The Brave browser is constantly monitoring your attention to see what kind of content you’re spending most of your time on. Based on this, publishers will be paid accordingly. Since the browser uses the blockchain to keep track of all this data, it is impossible to tamper with it.
However, the Brave browser continuously measures the attention value of each ad in the browser. This value is calculated based on the incremental amount of time the ad was displayed and the number of ad pixels that appear in proportion to the relevant content. Using machine learning on the attention value of different ads, the Brave browser shows users the kind of ads they want to see.
Brendan Eich notes that as of now, users can earn $70 per year by watching ads, eventually going up to $224 per year by 2020.
Features of Brave Browser
Privacy: The user’s browsing data is kept completely private. As a result, all the information a person needs for ad matching will not be available. Third-party trackers are also automatically blocked.
Enhanced ad matching: Brave browser can display intent signals, active tabs, URLs, keyword search logins, browsing information, etc. maintains a complete collection of user data along with .
Improved experience: Users do not need to reach external servers for each page load.
BAT also has the dubious privilege of owning one of the most controversial ICOs ever. The BAT ICO raised a staggering $35 million in 30 seconds. Think about that for a second. The time we spent writing this paragraph was enough for BAT to raise their required capital.
Result
It creates a fair system for BAT and Brave to work by including all three members of the ecosystem (advertisers, publishers, and users). It is thought that these three members will be a revolutionary value tool by redefining and planning their relationships. BAT may indeed be one of the most revolutionary projects out there. Let’s hope that they can maintain their positive momentum and offer us a product that we will use widely in the future.
