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Basic Attention Token takes the disruption of the online advertising industry one step further with the project’s Brave ads trial program. Though BAT’s price didn’t manage to prevent getting dragged down with the entire market, the BAT project has experienced continuous progress over the last 6 months.
One of the components of this progress is the Brave ads trial program, which was recently launched. BAT’s main goal is to disrupt the online advertising industry and allowing users to monetize on their attention for ads. This trial is a big step towards this goal.
The Ads Trial Program
One key ingredient of BAT’s road to disruption is their own Brave browser. This browser was built with blockchain and cryptocurrencies specifically in mind, and it scores high in terms of privacy and page-loading times. It has many features such as a built-in tools for blocking ads and cookies, script-disabling software, and the integration of the Basic Attention Token.
Both the browser and the token were designed for an entirely new model for online advertising — a direct attention economy. Instead of going through third parties, advertisers are directly linked to online content consumers. Advertisers purchase advertising space in the Brave ecosystem and users are only targeted for ads they are actually interested in. Then, they are paid directly for their attention by the advertisers.
Even though the Brave browser has been fully functional for a while now, this ads trial program is the first real implementation of the team’s disruptive proposed model. Through the trial program, users can actually earn BAT tokens in return for viewing ads based on their browser history.
70% of the total advertising profits will be paid to participants of the ad trial program. How much the profits will amount to, however, is still unclear.
It’s going to be an interesting experiment, though, to see how much one’s browsing behavior is actually worth to advertisers. The trial is currently only available to a select group of users, but Brave has indicated that they plan to expand user trials in the upcoming months.
During the trial, ads shown and paid for are based on a user’s Brave browser history. Therefore, users have to open up their browser history to the browser, which is another interesting experiment – will people actually do this if they have the option not to? Will they be willing to give advertisers access to their personal interests in order to make a little crypto on the side?
Participants of the trial are shown a few relevant ads per day based on their browsing history. For paying attention to these ads, the users are awarded with BAT tokens amounting to 70% of what the advertisers paid to the BAT team.
The Road to Disruption
This is a great first step towards fixing the broken model for online advertising, yet it is still a first step – hence the trial set-up. To actually be as disruptive as BAT aspires, they’re going to have to roll out a lot of similar trials, as the team is trying to disrupt a model that turned several tech startups such as Google and Facebook into conglomerate giants.
Once the team has discovered the ideal model for distributing value based on attention, they can start rolling out more of their novel models. We’re eagerly awaiting the results of this first ad trial.
To indicate your interest in taking part in these trials, contact the Brave Early Access group via community.brave.com. Stay up to date with the developments of these trials and more BAT-related news by following their blog or Twitter.
Download the Brave Browser.
