Why Digital Marketers Should Fear This New Browser

As if digital marketers didn’t have enough headaches to deal with in their promotional efforts, now they’re about to get another one: a new browser that blocks ads.

Brave
The new browser is called Brave. It’s not widely available yet, but it soon will be. It offers a great deal of promise to web surfers, but it’s bound to be a source of heartache to digital marketers.

The company that produced the new browser is Brave Software, a startup headed by Brendan Eich, who created JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla. He was ousted from Mozilla in 2014 when news emerged that he had contributed to California’s anti-gay marriage initiative back in 2008.

Just recently, the company released a test version of the browser. Early results show that it works on Microsoft Windows, Apple’s OS X, and smartphones running iOS or Android.

In other words, it runs on everything important.
The promise of Brave is that it offers users the chance to surf the web faster. According to Eich, the browser loads pages two to four times faster than its competitors on a mobile device and 1.4 times faster than other PC browsers.
How it does that is what will concern marketers.

Brave offers faster page loads by blocking ads and tracking technologies including cookies, fingerprinting, pixels, and scripts. That means digital marketers who are using retargeting to promote content like a plan to reduce weight or a guide to Bingo are going to face challenges when it comes to reaching Brave users.

Eich promises that Brave will disregard technologies that “target ads based on browser-side intent signals phrased in a standard vocabulary, and without a persistent user ID or highly re-identifiable cookie.”

However, the new browser will still show banner ads, just not the type that are the result of retargeting. Instead of ads, users will see blank spaces were those ads would be displayed in other browsers.

“We have to disconnect the bad system,” Eich said of his new browser. “I talk about putting chlorine in the pool.”

It’s important to note, though, that search ads won’t be blocked. That’s because they’re “intent-based” and give the user exactly what he or she is looking for.

Another advertised advantage of Brave: it offers enhanced privacy. That’s another big win in a digital age when people are concerned about excessive monitoring both from the public and private sector.

A User-Focused Browser
Eich plans to disrupt the browser industry with software that is more customer-focused than what’s currently offered.

“[W]e aim to solve the Principal-Agent problem wherever it arises,” he said. “Brave is the only approach to the Web that puts users first in ownership and control of their browsing data by blocking trackers by default, with no exceptions.”

The Revenue Model
Eich plans to sell advertising to publishers based on the limited amount of information gleaned from Brave.

“We’re going to have to prove ourselves to get that payment,” he said.
Once publishers are advertising, Eich plans to charge users of the browser to remove those ads. That will be a nominal fee, equivalent to a cup of coffee each month. However, if there are 10 million users and only 1/10th of them opt to pay the fee, that’s a steady source of revenue on top of the income generated from advertising.

Based on Chrome
Eich and his team didn’t build Brave from scratch. The new browser is built from Chromium, the basis for Google’s Chrome browser. That’s not only a stick in the eye to Eich’s former employer, but it also leaves most of the security support and development work to Google. 
Also, Eich insists, Chrome is more widely used.
“Chromium is the safe bet for us,” he said.

Wrapping It Up
Digital marketers are facing enough challenges thanks to the advent of ad blockers. When Brave gets released to the general public, it’s likely that they’ll be facing an even greater challenge from a browser that could be one of the more popular options on the market.