Basic Attention Token: how to destroy Facebook and Google’s advertising monopoly

[npopat12]

I thought I would share a post I wrote on behalf of my company which explains BAT and the use cases. Anyone new to crypto should read.

The advertising industry is broken

Over the past few years, digital advertising has been overrun by middlemen, fraud, and trackers. Users are abused, privacy violated, big platforms like Google and Facebook take more than 73 percent of all the ad dollars while publishers and advertisers are not allowed to monetise their services.

For instance, Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm in the UK harvested the personal data of people from over 50 million Facebook profiles without permission to build a system that will help them target voters and send a personal political advertisement to them based on their geography and characteristics.

Employees of Cambridge Analytica were even caught on camera boasting of using fake news and dirty tricks to swing election results around the world. An investigation by British data watchdog and a key investigation firm in the United States showed that Facebook also violated the privacy agreement of most of its users and made millions of dollars using the private information of users on the platform.

Can someone save it?

A smart solution has been put in place by Brendan Eich, an American technologist and creator of the JavaScript programming language and Mozilla Firefox browser. It’s called Brave.

Brendan recently founded the Brave browser which is an open source and privacy focused browser that blocks malware advertisement and trackers and also uses a system that captures user’s agreement to reward the publisher.

The brave browser works hand in hand with the Basic Attention Token (BAT), which is a unique crypto-token that has been created to improve the efficiency of digital advertising.

Users get paid in BATs for watching adverts or attention based services, whilst advertisers and publishers get rewarded in BATs for producing high quality content. A win-win for all parties involved.

The token is being traded on a decentralised and transparent digital ad exchange that is based on the Ethereum blockchain network. The utility of the token is solely based on the user’s engagement.

How does the magic work?

The Brave browser works by monitoring user’s attention, making it a perfect tool in calculating the publisher’s reward with BATs. By using this browser, publishers now receive more revenue because intermediaries (e.g. Facebook, Google) and fraud are radically reduced. Moreover, users receive fewer but better ads that are less prone to malware while advertisers get better data on their spending.

One unique feature of this platform is that users are not forced to see the ads. Instead, they are giving the opportunity to choose what kind of ads they will like to view while the publishers automatically generate well deserved revenue.

This system totally eradicates the role of middlemen like Google Ads, Facebook Ads and others who take a share of the advertising revenue, giving publishers the lion’s share which they truly deserve.

Should I be investing in BAT?

Investing in BATs is akin to investing in a project or technology you strongly believe in. If you believe in electric cars, you want to invest in and support Tesla, the same applies to the BAT if you believe that the online advertising industry needs to be revamped.


.... if you want to see the full Medium article please go to getelephant.co and click on blogs.

[mk4]

Basic Attention Token is definitely a decent project, no doubt about that. But you're crazy to think that this will "destroy" Facebook and Google's advertising monopoly. They're simply too ahead. Is it impossible for BAT to be a decent competitor though? Of course not. BAT definitely has a chance. It's just going to be really really tough to go against the biggest companies like Facebook and Google.

EDIT: this is definitely the wrong subforum.

[HeRetiK]

Eh... while I'm a fan of what BAT is trying to achieve, I don't see Facebook and Google being removed from their throne(s) anytime soon.

As long as people keep using Facebook and Google, advertisers will find it worthwhile to advertise on these platforms, as simple as that. Sure, Facebook is likely already past its prime, but privacy concerns unfortunately seem to mean very little in practice to most people. Pretty much the same goes for content producers getting ripped off by YouTube (eg. by sudden channel closures and Adsense suspension) -- there might be some short-lived outrage when popular channels get affected, but convenience is still what pushes most viewers towards this platform.

I definitely hope that BAT becomes a viable alternative but I'm not yet fully convinced.