Online adverts are becoming increasingly more invasive and involving more and more tracking to properly target their intended audience and for the most part, this is pretty harmless. The issue arises when adverts are obnoxiously placed over the content and ruins online experiences with ill-conceived advertorial and poorly targeted products that hold no relevance to the user. This is the reason that 64% of internet users employ some form of adblocking software to rid themselves of adverts that plague them across all platforms, with 84% of people saying they do not care that this is costing marketers money.
It's no wonder then that somebody has gone ahead and created an entire browser dedicated to reducing the time we spend looking at adverts. That someone is Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript, and father of 'Brave', the new browser that is looking like it will shake up the online advertising and marketing industry if Brendan has his way.
The premise of Brave is that it will contain adblocking software that users can have block all adverts or alternatively they can allow some adverts that fit the strict specifications of Brave. The innovative thing about Brave is not the adblocking software but the way it plans to bridge the gap between companies and their missing revenue they would normally get from traffic from adverts. Users will have an online wallet that is managed entirely by Brave, a direct debit is set up by the user and debit x amount of money in a month and then the user will select the content channels they regularly use that can accept payment. Brave will then dish out the money from the user's account based on what content has been read and then the money will be sent directly to the content creator, not the host! It's certainly an interesting way of tackling the ad companies, although as you can imagine the ad companies and publishers are absolutely furious. Cease and desist letters have already been sent but Brave intends to go right ahead, confident that they are breaking no laws.
It will be interesting to see how this develops further but we are likely about to experience a significant upset in the online marketing world.