Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done.
Users who come to Brave are already blocking ads. They understand the risk involved in letting third-party software collect information about them, their person, their browsing habits, and more. Further, the risk of drive-by downloads is on the rise (or the growing popularity of crypto-jacking).
Brave blocks ads and trackers for safety and privacy reasons. But we are not so naive to miss the impact this has on well-meaning publishers. This is why we created the User Growth Pool, and the Brave Payments system. Every month we pour hundreds of thousands of dollars back into the pockets of content creators by way of BAT (Basic Attention Token) grants, distributed freely to users of the Brave browser.
But grants won't last forever, something sustainable has be erected in place of the incumbent digital advertising system. This is where Brave Ads comings into play.
For users who opt in, Brave can deliver better quality ads, without the risk of personal data leakage. We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this). Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads.
When you consider the amount of money lost to digital ad fraud each year (over $20,000,000,000 I believe), you can see how the Brave system would lead to a much better, and more sustainable future for the web.
We're not simply replacing ads. We're rescuing an industry.