Is Basic Attention Token the online advertising disruptor?

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BASIC ATTENTION TOKEN

Global Blockchain Digital Advertising Platform

BAT- What is it? 

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an ERC20 Token to be used as a fully integrated currency for internet browsers ( e.g. BRAVE or Mozilla Firefox). It can help distribute payments to websites, advertisers, artists and content producers directly through the browser. It will also be developed to allow digital advertisers to transact with publishers more transparently and with less friction.

Brave Browser

The BAT currency is already integrated into the Brave Browser which is a fully functioning product with real utility. The Brave browser blocks online advertisements and trackers right within the browser. This saves loading times, bandwidth and allows for more browsing privacy. The BAT token currently functions as an automatic distribution method to websites that are visited by the user within the Brave browser. The user must deposit BAT into their token wallet and the Brave browser will automatically pay the most popular websites visited on a set basis (subject to custom user settings). In November 2017 Brave also allowed for individual YouTube channels to be paid through the browser, which is a real game changer. The user doesn’t have to do anything except deposit BAT and everything is arranged with the websites and publishers by the Brave team. The BAT payments are purely voluntary and completely customisable but the browser’s advertising blocker works automatically by default.

Future Development

Although BAT started as an additional revenue model for websites who have their ads blocked by Brave, the intention is to expand the use of the BAT currency to solve the current issues with online digital advertising. These problems include the friction of payments, fraud, fake clicks and general transparency to publishers ( e.g. accurately tracking how effective advertising is to the target audience).

Online Advertising

Online digital ads and trackers grew from exploits within browsers through cookies etc. Anyone that has visited free digital newspaper/magazine websites has experienced the slow loading pages and annoying ads. Added to this, are the irritating ads for products that you have zero interest in or for something you’ve already bought. This comes from the many ‘trackers’ that record all your internet usage. What’s really scary is when you see an advert on a device where you’ve not even searched for that product on that same device. A sophisticated set of techniques is used to track and profile each user in order to sell your profile to advertisers. BAT and Brave are looking to change this broken advertising paradigm for users, publishers and advertisers.

Opportunities

The big opportunity for BAT is to completely change the current model of browser advertising which is currently dominated by the major search engine and advertising intermediary Google. This can be done by completely blocking the ads being shown in the browser and cutting out the intermediary. If Brave starts to gain traction it will force content publishers to engage with BATs future suite of advertising offerings. Google collects a vast amount of information on users and it’s all aggregated to create a user profile that can be monetized. Basic Attention Token seeks to change this in the favor of the individual user by helping take back some of their information and privacy. The users browser data is intended to stay locally on the users device and is not shared directly with third parties without permission. All this will be achieved through the use of Basic Attention Metrics (BAM).

Basic Attention Metrics (BAM)

The Basic Attention Metrics (BAM) aim to analyse the required personal data better to serve more relevant ads but where the user gets to retain and monetise their own data and profile. This BAM model can help advertisers serve more relevant ads to people more willing to be targeted for certain products. So instead of receiving ads for things you don’t like you could opt in to watch ads for products that you’re really interested in. This can work well for large ticket items such as a car or for gifts around seasonal times of the year when inspiration is useful. This means instead of being bombarded with ads that no one cares for, there could be a more personal interactive experience.

This can result in users spending less time being served irrelevant ads and advertisers targeting more effectively with less money wasted. This can even feed through to better prices, discounts and offers for users. Another potential result is that consumers can become actively engaged in promotions and even become incentivised with tokens to share referral links and offers to friends and followers which could help a promotion go viral.

Earn While You Watch

In the future a whole economy itself could exist where advertisers provide value to users directly just to watch and interact with promotional material and media. This could start by a user declaring they are interested in buying a big ticket item. Then advertisers could bid and compete to show promotional media to the user. A questionnaire or some other interaction could be used to ensure the user watches and shares the media in order to receive the reward. The value exchange could result in a certain amount of BAT being locked away to effectively act as discount if the user goes on to buy the promoted item.

Mozilla, YouTube…

Plenty of other Apps, games and even other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox could integrate BAT payments and the BAM advertising model.

Even individual YouTube channels or Twitch users can benefit from BAT payments without having to go through Google or any intermediary as the value is transferred directly through the browser. Indeed as of November 2017 individual YouTube channels can pick up revenue through BAT (if a user is participating and selects to do so). This is indeed game changing as YouTube has a relative monopoly and has been censoring content. YouTube has also removed advertising revenue from certain videos and channels when ‘they’ feel it’s not appropriate. This is blatant censorship and many popular YouTubers have complained to no avail. If a user watches YouTube content through Brave then there is no way to permanently stop any channel receiving revenue from BAT.

Team

The Basic Attention Token team is one of the best in Crypto.

The founder of BAT and the Brave Browser is one of the most experienced names in the technology space. Brendan Eich created Javascript, founded Mozilla and worked on the Netscape Browser at the advent of the internet. His story is Steve Jobs like as he was removed as CEO from the company he founded (Mozilla), and now he’s back with a slicker competing product that is gaining traction. The rest of the team and advisors have great relevant experience from the likes of Yahoo, Microsoft etc and I would urge anyone interested in BAT to review the team for themselves on the BAT website 

Competition 

The non-crypto competition is Facebook and Google who are two of the most powerful behemoths of them all. Together these two companies completely dominate the online advertising market. BAT can expect a fierce resistance from these two companies even if BAT is suspected of making a slight dent in their gargantuan profits. Brave is very much appealing to the growing crypto crowd and the more people that own the BAT tokens the more the network effect could take hold. With Brave potentially owning the non-mobile app browser space that Google and Facebook can operate in, any uptake in Brave usage could get very interesting indeed.

The most evident crypto competition comes from AdChain and Adex. One is partnering with NEO so has a Chinese focus and the other claims to be complimentry to BAT. These two rivals are not seen as a major threat or even direct equal competition to BAT. The Brave browser is the big advantage to BAT as this slick browser can be the foundation of so many applications for the BAT currency.

Conclusion

If BAT can succeed in becoming central to the transformation of online advertising then the potential token value appreciation would be significant. This is because online advertising is one of the biggest opportunities with the most disruptive potential in the crypto space. BAT has an incredibly experienced founder who has put together an amazingly talented team so their chances of success are increased. Brave and BAT are a working product but the real disruptive potential is with the future product roll outs that could transform the multi billion dollar online advertising industry. There is of course execution risk with the future products and it could take time to refine the model but this team has the best chance to make it work.