Brave Browser is among the most popular and important projects of 2019 and from which we expect a lot of news in 2020, as such, Marketing Leader and Business Development Director Des Martin agreed to be interviewed about the new goals of the team and much more.
What are your thoughts on the traditional media, publishing and advertising industries?
We are living through a period of big change for traditional media. Traditional media have struggled to find new business models in the digital age. Advertising euros/dollars have flowed away from publishing and into platforms like Facebook and Google.
Firstly, based on your experience, how are traditional players approaching new distributed and decentralised solutions? Are they scared or do they have an open minded approach?
There is a lot of interest in new solutions. But these publishers have been promised things in the past that did not deliver revenue: AMP, video distribution, etc. In my experience traditional players are slow to change.
Secondly, as can be seen by the many scandals and case histories, huge traditional media, publishing and advertising players are controlling and centralising the market. How do you think are the users reacting and would they be able to understand this massive limit and huge problem? Do you believe it could change in the short-mid term, or do you believe we need to wait for a new generation to obtain a different approach from the consumer and retail audience?
The consumer has often been ignored by publishers and advertisers. User experience has deteriorated on many websites. Pop-ups, spammy ads covering content have become common. Downloading additional “web junk” slows page loads and chews battery life.
Many users do not realise they are downloading the surveillance economy as they browse the web. Many publisher websites have over 100 trackers profiling people as they visit web pages. Publishers often do not realise they are selling their users’ data as part of their online advertising. The impact of surveillance marketing is just becoming evident. Scandals like Cambridge Analytica made people aware that giant surveillance operations are a bad idea. Not only can you shape an individual’s actions, but you can shape the actions of large groups of people or even countries.
The consumer was forgotten about, but now consumers are voting with their feet and choosing new private options with better user experience.
In addition to the Brave Browser platform and the Basic Attention Token (BAT), is the company focusing on new business opportunities in the market?
Brave recently passed 10M active users. Our next goal is to reach 100M users. As our user base grows, so do the opportunities. For now our goal is to grow our user base and build out the BAT ecosystem.
In conclusion, do you have any ideal goal or case history that you’d like to see live and implemented in the global blockchain industry as real demonstration that decentralisation could have a real social impact?
We are still really early. Decentralisation will take time, likely decades. Hopefully one of the early wins for decentralisation will be the ability for people to own their online data. Choose if they want to share that data with third parties and if they share they should be paid. Data has real value and it should not be given for free to massive tech giants.
