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Brave's strategy of replacing ads with other ads isn't going to do anyone any good. They could've used payment channels to build a content distribution network

Brave's strategy of replacing ads with other ads isn't going to do anyone any good. They could've used payment channels to build a content distribution network, but alas...

atomical 8y ago
Why? They are ensuring user privacy by doing all machine learning locally. Google had the unofficial "don't be evil" motto and Brave has "can't be evil" as a motto.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jonathansampson 8y ago
I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. 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.
- britch 8y ago
  I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blockers. At least personally I have always viewed ad blockers like DVRs for the web.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    I install ad blockers because I don't want to get auto redirected to a porn site which some unscrupulous ad vendors make possible. I tried going blocker free at work for 6 months. uBO got installed the day I was sent to a porn site by malicious JavaScript after clicking on an innocuous link. Google won't address the JavaScript problem with their ad network so I cut them off.
    - faag36 8y ago
      The Internet for people who don't know about ad blockers must be a horrible place, it's no wonder everybody started using apps for everything.
      - dest 8y ago
        Aren't apps also crippled by ads?
        bduerst 8y ago
        Yes. Apps are a step backwards because they are in a much less user-controlled space. App adoption is more correlated with mobile platform adoption as opposed to demand for ad blocking.
        faag36 8y ago
        Some have ads, but they are definitely not crippled by ads and malware.
msla 8y ago
Just to get people on the same page, Doc Searls has a good post on the difference between advertising and adtech, and why replacing adtech with advertising is something one might want to do: http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/ http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/ > Advertising isn’t personal, and doesn’t have to be. In fact, knowing it’s not personal is an advantage for advertisers. Consumers don’t wonder what the hell an ad is doing where it is, who put it there, or why. > Advertising makes brands. Nearly all the brands you know were burned into your brain by advertising. In fact the term branding was borrowed by advertising from the cattle business. (Specifically by Procter and Gamble in the early 1930s.) > Advertising carries an economic signal. Meaning that it shows a company can afford to advertise. Tracking-based advertising can’t do that. (For more on this, read Don Marti, starting here.) > Advertising sponsors media, and those paid by media. All the big pro sports salaries are paid by advertising that sponsors game broadcasts. For lack of sponsorship, media—especially publishers—are hurting. @WaltMossberg learned why on a conference stage when an ad agency guy said the agency’s ads wouldn’t sponsor Walt’s new publication, recode. Walt: “I asked him if that meant he’d be placing ads on our fledgling site. He said yes, he’d do that for a little while. And then, after the cookies he placed on Recode helped him to track our desirable audience around the web, his agency would begin removing the ads and placing them on cheaper sites our readers also happened to visit. In other words, our quality journalism was, to him, nothing more than a lead generator for target-rich readers, and would ultimately benefit sites that might care less about quality.” With friends like that, who needs enemies? Versus the top four things he says about adtech: > Adtech is built to undermine the brand value of all the media it uses, because it cares about eyeballs more than media, and it causes negative associations with brands. Consider this: perhaps a $trillion or more has been spent on adtech, and not one brand known to the world has been made by it. (Bob Hoffman, aka the Ad Contrarian, is required reading on this.) > Adtech wants to be personal. That’s why it’s tracking-based. Though its enthusiasts call it “interest-based,” “relevant” and other harmless-sounding euphemisms, it relies on tracking people. In fact it can’t exist without tracking people. (Note: while all adtech is programmatic, not all programmatic advertising is adtech. In other words, programmatic advertising doesn’t have to be based on tracking people. Same goes for interactive. Programmatic and interactive advertising will both survive the adtech crash.) Adtech spies on people and violates their privacy. By design. Never mind that you and your browser or app are anonymized. The ads are still for your eyeballs, and correlations can be made. > Adtech is full of fraud and a vector for malware. @ACFou is required reading on this. > Adtech incentivizes publications to prioritize “content generation” over journalism. He also makes the point that adtech is fundamentally closer to direct marketing (mail spam, email spam... all spam except meaty SPAM): https://medium.com/@dsearls/rethinking-john-wanamaker-3f9cfac3ea03 https://medium.com/@dsearls/rethinking-john-wanamaker-3f9cfa... Brave replacing adtech with advertising is intelligible if you understand the distinction being made.

Brave's strategy of replacing ads with other ads isn't going to do anyone any good. They could've used payment channels to build a content distribution network, but alas...

atomical 8y ago

Why? They are ensuring user privacy by doing all machine learning locally. Google had the unofficial "don't be evil" motto and Brave has "can't be evil" as a motto.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jonathansampson 8y ago

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. 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.

britch 8y ago
I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blockers. At least personally I have always viewed ad blockers like DVRs for the web.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  I install ad blockers because I don't want to get auto redirected to a porn site which some unscrupulous ad vendors make possible. I tried going blocker free at work for 6 months. uBO got installed the day I was sent to a porn site by malicious JavaScript after clicking on an innocuous link. Google won't address the JavaScript problem with their ad network so I cut them off.
  - faag36 8y ago
    The Internet for people who don't know about ad blockers must be a horrible place, it's no wonder everybody started using apps for everything.
    - dest 8y ago
      Aren't apps also crippled by ads?
      - bduerst 8y ago
        Yes. Apps are a step backwards because they are in a much less user-controlled space. App adoption is more correlated with mobile platform adoption as opposed to demand for ad blocking.
      - faag36 8y ago
        Some have ads, but they are definitely not crippled by ads and malware.

msla 8y ago

Just to get people on the same page, Doc Searls has a good post on the difference between advertising and adtech, and why replacing adtech with advertising is something one might want to do: http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/ http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/ > Advertising isn’t personal, and doesn’t have to be. In fact, knowing it’s not personal is an advantage for advertisers. Consumers don’t wonder what the hell an ad is doing where it is, who put it there, or why. > Advertising makes brands. Nearly all the brands you know were burned into your brain by advertising. In fact the term branding was borrowed by advertising from the cattle business. (Specifically by Procter and Gamble in the early 1930s.) > Advertising carries an economic signal. Meaning that it shows a company can afford to advertise. Tracking-based advertising can’t do that. (For more on this, read Don Marti, starting here.) > Advertising sponsors media, and those paid by media. All the big pro sports salaries are paid by advertising that sponsors game broadcasts. For lack of sponsorship, media—especially publishers—are hurting. @WaltMossberg learned why on a conference stage when an ad agency guy said the agency’s ads wouldn’t sponsor Walt’s new publication, recode. Walt: “I asked him if that meant he’d be placing ads on our fledgling site. He said yes, he’d do that for a little while. And then, after the cookies he placed on Recode helped him to track our desirable audience around the web, his agency would begin removing the ads and placing them on cheaper sites our readers also happened to visit. In other words, our quality journalism was, to him, nothing more than a lead generator for target-rich readers, and would ultimately benefit sites that might care less about quality.” With friends like that, who needs enemies? Versus the top four things he says about adtech: > Adtech is built to undermine the brand value of all the media it uses, because it cares about eyeballs more than media, and it causes negative associations with brands. Consider this: perhaps a $trillion or more has been spent on adtech, and not one brand known to the world has been made by it. (Bob Hoffman, aka the Ad Contrarian, is required reading on this.) > Adtech wants to be personal. That’s why it’s tracking-based. Though its enthusiasts call it “interest-based,” “relevant” and other harmless-sounding euphemisms, it relies on tracking people. In fact it can’t exist without tracking people. (Note: while all adtech is programmatic, not all programmatic advertising is adtech. In other words, programmatic advertising doesn’t have to be based on tracking people. Same goes for interactive. Programmatic and interactive advertising will both survive the adtech crash.) Adtech spies on people and violates their privacy. By design. Never mind that you and your browser or app are anonymized. The ads are still for your eyeballs, and correlations can be made. > Adtech is full of fraud and a vector for malware. @ACFou is required reading on this. > Adtech incentivizes publications to prioritize “content generation” over journalism. He also makes the point that adtech is fundamentally closer to direct marketing (mail spam, email spam... all spam except meaty SPAM): https://medium.com/@dsearls/rethinking-john-wanamaker-3f9cfac3ea03 https://medium.com/@dsearls/rethinking-john-wanamaker-3f9cfa... Brave replacing adtech with advertising is intelligible if you understand the distinction being made.