Basic Attention Token (BAT) Introduction And Guide
Basic Attention Token or BAT is an Etheruem-based ad-exchange platform that connects publishers and advertisers on the blockchain. The BAT token is the ERC-2o utility token used on the platform and it is integrated into the Brave Web browser which lets the users tip the content creators with the BAT tokens which can later be used to purchase ads through its Google-like ads platforms.
What Is The Basic Attention Token?
Both the Brave software and the BAT token were founded by Brendan Eich who is the inventor of the JavaScript programming language and the co-founder of Firefox and Mozzila. Eich claims that all these are separate projects although the companies such as Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, Pantera capital and Propel Venture Partners all invested over $7 million in both of the projects. BAT giant a lot of popularity in November 2018 when it first got listed on both Coinbase and Circle. The cryptocurrency is now accepted by some major publishers such as Vice, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Vimeo.
Of Course, there are other competing as well including Steem and Tron and other blockchain-based content platforms which all promise a better way to connect the consumers with the creators. What makes BAT special is its direct focus on digital advertising. Digital advertising is a huge-business pegged to the $209 billion in annual revenues and surpassed TV ad spending in 2017. Fixing the pain points in the industry involves tracking user engagement and return on advertising spend but also to understand better how to improve the target ads across the platforms today. If BAT proves this concept works, it will become one of the best platforms for these digital ad giants.
It is also very likely that Eich is creating an open-source giant to compete with the giants of the tech industry. BAT, however, is not the only blockchain or crypto ad platform hoping to disrupt the industry. Before exploring whether or not the BAT platform can fulfill its goals, let’s find out how the BAT token is performing.
Market Performance
The total supply of the Basic Attention Token is 1,500,000,000 BAT and the supply is fixed and BAT cannot be mined. BAT is generated when a user sees one of the Brave ADS on the Brave Browser. The user receives a portion of the BAT proportionate which hits their engagement. Brave receives a portion and the remaining portion is paid to the content publisher that hosts the AD. The BAT tokens are spendable for premium content on the platform along with the ad blocks on the Google AdSense-like platform.
The Basic Attention token ICO happened in May 2017 and raised to $35 million in 30 seconds. One BAT token was sold in the ICO, 300 million were set aside for the user growth pool and 200 million was created for the development team. The BAT rewards from the UGP include the 5 BAT per month for the early adopters of the Brave Browser.
In addition to the recent Coinbase and Circle listings, the BAT can be bought, sold and traded on many crypto exchanges including Bittrex, Binance, UpBit, and CPDX. Over $13 million in BAT is traded daily and the trading pairs include BTC, ETH, and USDT. Because the BAT token is an ERC-20 token, it is supported by any compatible wallet including the Nano Ledger S and MyEther Wallet.
Blockchain Digital Advertising
Google and Facebook are known as social media giants and search engines but most of their revenue comes from advertising. In fact, in 2017, more than $95,38 billion of Google’s $110,9 billion in revenue came from advertising and $9.94 of Facebook’s $40.65 billion revenue. Google accounts for 63.2 percent of all online search traffic and Facebook hosts 2.27 billion users so these juggernauts are unstoppable forces. The content creators from bloggers and podcasters more depend on the ad revenue to continue working. Business depends on advertising and marketing to raise brand awareness and create paying customers.
Spending on these ads is very hard to justify and when one in five internet users between the coveted marketing ages of 18 and 35 use ad blockchain software and only about 10 percent of mobile devices are spent browsing the internet. The effectiveness of ad campaigns across all these channels is very difficult. Since most of the marketing and PR is done by a third-party agency, the tacking needs to be done to meet service-level-agreements and this is where the BAT and Brave browser comes in.
Brave Browser History
Brave is an open-source and a free web browser based on the Blink engine which is used by Chromium which is Google’s open-source Chrome clone. For those who are unaware, here’s a short timeline of the web browsers to understand Eich’s contribution. In 1995 there were only two major internet browser Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Navigator had most of the features that we still use today and it was widely regarded as the better browser.
Unfortunately, it was unable to compete with Microsoft and the demise of Netscape was the major point of the 2001 antitrust lawsuit that was filed against Microsoft by the US government. The software was not free in those days and Microsoft was accused of restricting Opera, Navigator and another third-party browser from competing. Netscape Navigator’s code served as the basis for Firefox which we still use today that was developed by the Mozilla Foundation and it was not just the code since the Mozilla organizations were created by Netscape. A few years later, Google launched its Chrome browser in 2008.
Brave and BAT represent the culmination of Eich’s lessons that were learned in the early days of the Internet browsing and his attempt to continue what he started with a new model of monetization. Brave integrated BAT into its browser to block ads at the site level and serve them through the browser. By incentivizing the users with the BAT token for viewing ads, the hope is to create a better crypto economy. The AD blocks create smart contracts that are stored on the Ethereum blockchain and the user browsing data is also tracked which reduces the need for the cookies and the das are targeted better than Google and Facebook.
In-feed, the advertising tactics like influencer marketing and sponsored posts are huge marketing trends so the BRAVE browser and BAT have a long fight ahead for bigger market adoption. Brave has more than 5.5 million monthly active users at the end of 2018. The question remains for the software whether it can attract more advertisers to make an imprint on Facebook and Google’s dominance.
Summary
The web browsing is a big business and the co-founder of the software and CEO Brendan Eich is one of the godfathers of the business. After battling with Netscape and Mozzila, he created the new open-source browser which is monetized using the Basic Attention Token.
Eich is very popular in the community and his attachment to the project helped it to make multiple partnerships with advertisers and publishers. The Basic Attention Token is awarded at the browser level and is now only available for the Brave browser. Users will get rewarded with the BAT tokens for viewing and engaging with ads and the BAT will then be used to purchase premium content or ad blocks.
