My Brave Ad Income

I have been following and participating in the Brave Internet program (ad blocking browser and ad-related services). My idealistic way of explaining the Brave program is that it provides the opportunity to protect user privacy while providing resources to content and service providers. There are a lot of assumptions in the model so label it as idealistic at present.

Brave just added the final component of the model – users can allow ads provided through Brave to be displayed and be compensated for viewing (in theory) these ads. Brave takes a cut of the funds provided by those who purchase the ads and Brave does not collect user data when displaying the ads. The content/service consumers is compensated by using the Brave ad model instead of existing ad models.

Last month I earned 6.1 BAT (presently valued at $2.04) for viewing ads through Brave. I used the lowest ad rate (2 per hour) and I could have set this higher. I also spent far more time online, but my Brave account is attached to my desktop computer and I do not accumulate BAT when using my laptop, tablet, or phone even though I might use the Brave browser on these other devices. Brave has yet found at a way to integrate accounts and the compensation plan also does not apply with tablets or phones. At this point.

I should also say that I cannot collect my $2.04 at this point, but this is supposedly coming. At present, I am just adding my income to the amount I have designated to support content creators.

Here is the biggest problem I see with the Brave model. I fear that most users will simply use the model to block ads and collect BAT for viewing Brave ads. One of the first “opportunities” Brave provided was for users to put in real model that was converted into BAT (a cryptocurrency) and the amount of this stash that was allocated per month would be distributed among the content/service providers that registered with Brave. I put in $50 as my investment in the experiment. I did register my domain (https://learningaloud.com) as part of this experiment. Brave provides no data on how many Brave users are also contributors. I am guessing not many so far.

Brave is great at protecting the privacy of users, BUT to this point it has protected producers only through voluntary contributions. Brave is in a position to do more. It would be as easy as splitting the ad revenue generated by the ads provided through Brave among itself, content creators, and consumers. Consumers could still make personal contributions. I just see this company advancing beyond privacy protection until it does a better job of including all of the parties involved in use of Internet resources.