Basic Attention Token's Plan to Revolutionize Advertising
Hi everyone. This crypto highlight article will cover an upcoming cryptocurrency with large ambitions: the Basic Attention Token, or BAT for short. The BAT, along with its companion product the Brave internet browser, aim to change digital advertising forever. Let's cover what the BAT does.
Digital Advertising is Broken
According to Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and the leader of the BAT Project, online advertising is broken now.
Online advertising was once much simpler. It consisted of Advertisers, Publishers, and Users. [It] has evolved into an opaque and inefficient marketplace.
—Brendan Eich, BAT Project
In many ways, that's true. Currently, we see many fraudulent ads all over some websites, harming the user experience and maximizing our data bills. As such, many users have opted to use Ad Blockers to completely block out ads and trackers, because of the extra privacy protection this provides.
However, this has negatively affected the advertising industry as a whole, and there seemed to be no compromise allowing for cooperation between advertisers, website owners, and the users. Basic Attention Token claims to be the solution to this massive problem, integrating digital advertising into an anonymous distributed blockchain utilizing the BAT cryptocurrency. Let's see how it does this.
How does BAT work?
According to the official website, "The Basic Attention Token is the new token for the digital advertising industry. It pays publishers for their content and users for their attention, while providing advertisers with more in return for their ads." But what exactly does this mean?
First of all, the BAT splits off of the network into three "classes": the users, the publishers, and the advertisers. Let's explore each class and see how the BAT affects them.
Users
Should users choose to opt-in to advertising, they get paid with BAT tokens/cryptocurrency for their ad viewing. BATs cooperate with the Brave Browser, a new browser created just for this purpose that anonymously/privately monitors user attention. This provides a nice incentive for users to enable advertising and view ads.
Publishers
Publishers and website owners also receive BATs when users receive BATs. As a user gives some of their attention to an ad, the user and the publisher are rewarded with BATs. This provides a fair incentive to publishers to place ads on their site.
Advertisers
Advertisers pay BATs to get their ad seen. Their ads now target a better audience, the network has reduced fraud, and advertisers can get more users' attention leading to a better return-on-investment (ROI) for them.
How anonymous/private is it for users?
This is also an important question, as using a transparent/public blockchain may worry some users about their privacy. However, BAT claims to have a solution to this as well, by making most user interactions local and privatized. Let's have a look.
Target Matching
Today, when you view a Google Ad, your interests/viewing habits are automatically streamed to Google's servers and recorded there, which is highly detrimental to our anonymity/privacy. Instead of using a similar system, BAT uses local machine learning algorithms (that take place on your computer) to match you with ads you might like.
Anonize Algorithm
BAT also says that user privacy is protected with the usage of the ANONIZE Algorithm. Anonize is based on "a new cryptographic technology that ensures only survey targets can respond, and only once, while unconditionally guaranteeing anonymity." (source)
Cryptocurrency Market Value
BAT is currently trading at just over a quarter (25 cents), with a market cap of $0.265B, which is remarkably close to Steem's.
BAT's official website is available here. As always, do the appropriate research before investing in any cryptocurrency!
Thanks for reading,
— @mooncryption
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so many new revolutionary things are coming !
thanks for sharing
Here are a few links to get you started on BAT:
BAT Links
How to Get BAT
BAT is actually an Ethereum ERC20 token, so you can hold it in any compatible Ethereum wallet (such as MyEtherWallet, Mist, etc). Many crypto exchanges include BAT; my favorite is Changelly for having the best rates.
Other Questions?
If the above links and post didn't answer your question yet, feel free to post your question in the comments, and I'll get back to you ASAP. Thanks!
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However, this has negatively affected the advertising industry as a whole
awww...too bad..so sad.
They brought it on themselves.
Almost any website nowdays is a minefield.
it's almost impossible to concentrate on the content.
the experience is not pleasant.
As far as I'm concerned they can take a long walk on a short dock...during a hurricane.
You're right in that some specific players in the advertising industry went on a rampage, creating obtrusive, fraudulent, and distracting ads, making users hate ads as a whole for wrecking their user experience. There do exist a few websites with "good ads", little ones that don't intrude on the experience.
Now, after all of this, literally everyone I know uses some form of an adblocker. BAT's goal is to kill off these obtrusive ads and give users an incentive to switch back to viewing ads. I'm not sure if it will work or not, but it seems like they have a good plan and ambition, so I'm happy to support them.
Thanks for your comment Mr. Mickey.
you're welcome.
mindless Ads drove me away from TV
...about half a century ago...haven't watched it since.
to be fair , the weather has had gore to contend with for the last 20 years, it seem a little unfair to inflict the advertising industry on it as well.
have a heart ! lol
At the danger of sounding cynical - its just pay to click service using a different currency?
Can you explain to me how this is different?
At the end of the day, and what this shows - people dont like intrusive advertising.
A billboard o the highway is a choice to look at or not.
Ads forcing there way into your browser is intrusive, and unasked for.
People don't like it.
So this will become a pay to click service for people wanting to make some money....?
Or am i being too cynical?
Not exactly. It doesn't rely on clicks, actually, it relies on a new type of measurement the creators made called "attention." Attention is measured by things like the amount of time a user spends looking at an ad, the size of an ad relative to the other content on the page, and perhaps if they click on it as well.
Additionally, BAT gives you a choice: you can accept advertising, and get rewarded with BAT tokens/cryptocurrency for looking at ads and giving ads attention, or you can use a built-in adblocker to block all trackers and advertisements, forfeiting all rewards.
The focus of BAT is to be usable enough for publishers/advertisers to rely on and profitable enough for users to choose the first option and give attention to ads. As you said, users are totally against intrusive advertising, leading to the popularity of adblockers. If BAT works out, adblockers may die in popularity as users prefer looking at ads and getting BAT rewards.
The success of BAT depends on how good this attention algorithm is. I have invested in BAT because I think their team can pull it out.
Ermmm, ok. It just seems it will become ad 'mining' system for bots.
Yeah, bots may become a problem for the system. I'm actually not sure of how they'll deal with bots, though it may involve some form of machine learning to detect bots.
If anyone knows, feel free to answer.
addendum - and then pass that information onto steemit! lol
Why don't they use fiat currency instead of their own cryptotoken? It's less volatile so not as much risks for users of the platform. I feel like this is keeping companies away from using bat
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