Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a solution developed for Digital Advertising by a former creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla, so you know the web is going to be powering this one! It is open source, efficient, transparent and exchangeable between publishers and advertisers on the Ethereum blockchain.
Through the BRAVE platform users can access advertising and attention-grabbing services designed for mental engagement by the viewer. In the BAT network, there are 3 types of accounts: advertisers, publishers and users.
In the current day and age, digital advertising has fallen victim to data tracking, scammers, fraud and middlemen who extract exorbitant fees for their service. Some stats: 50% of average mobile data is being used up by intrusive ads and trackers, this costs users about $23/month. Large media sites have also fallen under the sway of trackers that are regularly violating user privacy. On top of this, malware and bloatware are rising at an astronomical rate.
Traditional internet publishers like Google and Facebook are also charging an arm and leg for their services, taking about 73% of all ad dollars and experiencing the majority of growth and benefit from it. Bots are also causing serious problems across the web. The developers at BAT are working on this token as an effort to combat the seedy underside to our digital realm.
In all of this, Advertisers and Publishers are fairing poorly against the behemoths that they rely so heavily upon. Many advertisers don’t receive good information on what they are paying for, and marketers can be fooled by scam-based websites and fraudulent practices like bot traffic where their ads are not even seen by real users.
So with the Brave Browser, the BAT network works something like this.
When you have a user, they are rewarded with BAT in exchange for their attention on a media engagement.
User attention is privately monitored on the Brave Browser in a decentralized fashion, their private data never leaves the device they are using because of the built-in anonymity shield.
Advertisers can reach users by spending BAT to achieve a higher ROI, reduction in fraud and enhanced targeting.
Publishers are able to receive BATs based on how much user attention is given to their content. As inefficiency goes down, revenue coming in goes up significantly.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a very promising project with an experienced development team working on it. If sailing goes smoothly, this could be a big player amongst the digital advertising and blockchain world in the years’ to come.