Brave: another nail in the coffin of intrusive online advertising

Ad-blocker web browser Brave has America’s print media fuming: the Newspaper Ass. of America has sent it several angry letters, while 17 of its members have publicly warned the company that it has crossed an ethical line and should stop what it’s doing forthwith.

But just what has Brave done to incur the wrath of the US media? It’s proposing a solution to the problem of invasive ads by substituting intrusive ads in websites with their own inventory, and aggregating the amount of money paid by advertisers into a single sum that would give participating websites 55 percent, weighted by how many impressions are served on their sites. Brave would then divide up the remaining amount between itself, its ad-matching partner, and the users, each getting a 15 percent share. Yep, you heard it right: they block the ads in the page, and replace them with their own ads.

Brave was set up by Brendan Eich, the legendary creator of Javascript and co-founder of the Mozilla Foundation, although he left the organization in April 2014, 11 days after he was appointed CEO following uproar over his $1,000 donation to Proposition 8, which unsuccessfully campaigned against same-sex marriage in California.

The company has responded to publishers’ allegations of illegality, countercharging that the media has deliberately misinterpreted its actions, effectively confusing the solution with the problem. The company says that what it has done is simply the same as all ad-blockers or the Safari browser: to separate content from advertising, blocking anything that the user would have blocked anyway, and offering users the chance to earn a few bitcoins by clicking on advertisements. Furthermore, it says the newspapers didn’t even bother to contact Brave before bringing out the heavy artillery, that they don’t understand the model, and that, paradoxically, they are angry because Brave was going to give them money.

Brave’s approach is undoubtedly aggressive, and on one level it seems perfectly reasonable that the media is protesting at having its advertising removed and replaced with that provided by a third party: they would not only lose control over their revenue stream, but would also have to deal with an unwanted middleman that has exposed their malpractice to boot.

At the same time, publishers need to remember that more and more people are installing adblockers, and that responding with their own form of blocking techniques will just make things worse. What’s more, legal action is no longer an option after three different courts in Germany ruled that users were perfectly entitled to install ad-blockers.

Logic would also seem to support Brave’s move: if we as individuals can legally install ad-blockers or use Safari to read content free of advertising, why not allow a third party to replace one advertisement with another, and on top, pay you?

That said, allowing a third party, without permission, to use your company’s advertising inventory as it sees fit could be tricky. Cutting a deal with the company could bring in much-needed revenue, as well as giving advertisers the chance to get their message over to the public, while at the same time, users get a better browsing experience, as well as some money. Nevertheless, it does seem rather complicated. Brave is not trying to make a point here: it wants to become an aggregator for advertising agencies who would accept its restrictions on format in return for reaching the public.

This would require first, that everybody started using the Brave web browser, and secondly, that the agencies could agree on allowing this new intermediary in what is already a highly intermediated value chain, and that as well as taking a percentage of their revenue, would take over management of their advertising inventory. It’s hard to see this one panning out over the short- or medium-term, but it’s certainly a wake up call for the industry, as well as highlighting just how unwell that industry is.

(En español, aquí)