By Mylena Vazquez
Digital marketers are some of the most creative people around. Not only do they have to come up with interesting and visually appealing material, but they have to figure out how to make it reach their target audience. And with each day that passes, that task requires more and more ingenuity.
Users are smarter and more informed than ever. They have become increasingly aware of when they’re being marketed to—and they are also finding new ways to prevent marketing from ever reaching their eyes. Users are installing ad blockers, disabling cookies, and more. How can marketers overcome this digital problem?
Brave gets bold
As a user, imagine what it would be like to get paid to view ads. As a marketer, imagine what it would be like to have users actually choose to view your ads.
This is what Brave is trying (quite successfully) to accomplish through their Brave browser. Users can choose to opt out of ads altogether, though they forfeit rewards. Alternatively, they can choose to view ads with their desired frequency and receive rewards in cryptocurrency. They can keep this crypto or use it to reward their favorite creators.
As Brave’s motto goes, they strive to create a system in which users “get rewarded for paying attention.” They even announce it in their cryptocurrency’s name: the Basic Attention Token.
Brave raises the bar
Ultimately, users’ attention is what marketers desperately want. But sometimes that intense desire can drive marketers to undertake sneaky practices, like trying to bypass the roadblocks that users put in place.
Why choose to do this when studies show that 64% of people block ads because they find them annoying or intrusive; 54% also say that they do so because the ads interfere with their browsing experience. No matter how creative you get with strategic marketing placement or circumventing ad blockers, users will likely still be annoyed and still reject it or refuse to engage in any meaningful way.
Brave discovered that consent is the key to effective engagement. They gave agency back to the user and allowed them to feel like being marketed to is their choice and not some underhanded or dishonest set of tactics forced upon them. Brave also broke the rules of traditional marketing. They redefined what it means to provide value to the customer by actually giving them something tangible in return. Brave has created truly symbiotic marketing.
LET’S CHAT
Have you ever used the Brave browser? How does the experience differ from that of browsers which use traditional marketing practices?
