On Wednesday, Brave announced the release of the latest version of the Brave Browser desktop application with Brave Ads. With this feature, users will be able to choose the ads that they view and in return be compensated for their precious time.
It’s been the point for Brave all along even though it took a few years to arrive, it has gotten the crypto community excited including Brave CEO Brendan Eich himself.
“This is what we’re excited about because it doesn’t require publisher opt-in […] The main model for us is advertiser-to-user.”
According to him, users will be required to opt into the Reward program to be served with the ads. Once a user has opted in, they will be able to see notifications when then visit different pages that already have ads to serve to users. If the notification appeals to the user, they click through to a page that contains more information about the advertisement. Users will be rewarded 70% of the ad fees. The other remaining percentage will be split between Brave and the publishers.
According to the announcement, Brave has been set by default to donate the Brave rewards that would have accumulated by the end of every month unless the user opts to change the settings. Donations will be made to the user’s most visited websites of that month or used to tip favorite content creators.
However, if the user does not wish to donate their rewards (denominated in Brave’s native currency the Basic Attention Token [BAT]) they can exchange the tokens into vouchers to spend on shopping or meals. In addition, they can exchange the BAT into any other crypto through an exchange or into fiat currencies and be able to spend their rewards in the physical world as they see fit.
However, according to Eich, most users never opt to withdraw their rewards.
“A lot of users don’t want to cash out,” he said adding that “It’s not a huge amount of value for most people, so they may prefer to just use it to give back. And that’s the real idea: A browser with the user steering it is replacing the ad tech complex.”
