How does the Brave ad serving work?

Most Brave aficionados will have read about the fundamentals of the BAT ecosystem, but what exactly does the full ad serving flow look like?

  • First, the advertiser becomes verified, similar to how a publisher or creator verifies (with the wallet) with the Brave platform.
  • On the server side, the ad inventory is flighted into a catalog of URLs.
  • The ad catalog is then pushed to devices (by language & region).
  • The catalog functions as a local ad server on the user’s device. This is a distinct difference from the conventional ad serving mechanism (whereby the browser requests ads from a 3rd party server for every page load, which comes with a severe performance tax and significant data leakage).
  • Local machine learning, intent signals and the browser corpus progressively train on the user’s attention as they browse (note, that this data does not leave the device; again a key difference to the prevailing ad model).
  • At the calculated opportune time, the platform activates a local auction layer and bid-matches options from the inventory catalog that fit the attention-experience context.
  • The winning ad is presented to the user in the form of a native push notification.
  • The native push notification contains a call to action, and is only presented when deemed viewable (based on the user’s attention baseline).
  • If the user engages with the notification, a new tab displays which either displays the landing page or a rich media creative (HTML5 embeddable).
  • Hopefully, the user converts on the opportunity (be that a transaction, lead generation, etc.)
  • Analytics will be measured using Anonize2 zero-knowledge proof protocols (which allow for the user to remain anonymous to the advertiser).
  • Analytics are presented in aggregate in dashboards within the advertiser interface, and supposedly, APIs will also be available.

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