Founded in 2017 by the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, Brendan Eich, Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a cryptocurrency set to reinvent the idea of digital advertisement.
BAT aims to create a sound system for publishers, advertisers, and consumers. BAT gives users a reason to view online ads, which are usually seen as disruptive, and helps advertisers reach a broader audience in one go.
Why is Digital Advertising Important?
Before the internet, advertising was carried out through billboards, televisions, and newspapers.
It took advertisers time to broadcast their products, services, and money, as they needed to pay the bodies who owned these mediums.
Digital advertisement has progressed over the years, providing advertisers with the means of reaching larger audiences through the internet. With the internet being a global village, service owners found a better way to get more people and increase sales in a relatively shorter period.
The Problem With Digital Advertising
There are three major digital advertising players:
- Users who get the ads.
- Advertisers who own the products and services.
- Publishers with the space.
The advertisers pay for their services to be advertised, and the users get the ads, showing them that they can enjoy the services and products they might need.
The problem for users is these advertisements are usually considered disruptive. Rather than showing up when needed, they tend to cut in on videos, music, and other internet activities. They also come with cookies that collect data, which are harmful to privacy.
As a result, most users go out of their way to avoid internet advertisements, opting for ad-blocking software. In turn, traditional publishers lose revenue from online ads, and advertisers lose income from online purchases.
How does the Basic Attention Token Work?
A basic Attention Token (BAT) is used as an incentive to reward users and publishers. It focuses on monetizing attention, tapping into the “attention economy.”
Users get rewarded for the ads they view through the Brave Rewards program. The ads they view are tailored to fit their interests rather than a jumble of unimportant information. BATs can be exchanged for services on the platform, swapped for other cryptocurrencies, or used by consumers to tip their favorite publishers.
In addition, BAT cuts out intermediaries between advertisers and publishers, providing direct payment between both parties- increasing the yield publishers receive. They also get paid for the content viewed by consumers using the token.
Why is Basic Attention Token Important?
The Basic Attention Token operates on the Brave browser, a software that blocks malware, trackers, and privacy-invasive cookies.
These elements have become increasingly used by websites and advertisement bodies to collect users’ data– with or without permission and sell them to third parties. Third-party outsourcing often puts users’ privacy in the hands of nefarious operators, allowing them to do whatever they please with the accessed data.
Heavy on security, the BAT token team’s team has indicated that tracked information and private data will be solely stored on the user’s device alone. It reaffirms the importance of anonymity and privacy.
Additionally, BAT streamlines the interaction between advertisers and consumers, matching advertisements based on consumers’ interests through machine learning algorithms. This allows advertisers to launch effective and improved ad campaigns in the future.
In summary
The idea behind the creation of BAT is to make the cryptocurrency and its associated technologies a “future part of web standards, solving the important problem of monetizing publisher content while protecting user privacy.”
