How Two Businesses Are Changing The Online Advertising Industry

I wonder if Google and Facebook will do the same

The way online advertising works is drastically changing.

Today, anytime you’re using the internet, let’s say searching on Google or looking at a product on Amazon. Other companies of various sizes and backgrounds track your movement and collect your data to make money from it through targeted advertising.

Companies like Google make billions of dollars in revenue every quarter from advertising. You, the owner of the data, get nothing in return. Gener8ads (or Gener8) and Brave Ads are two businesses trying to change such a model and make the advertising game fairer.

They work as intermediaries between individuals and advertisers. They collect your digital data online and pay you a percentage of their revenue generated through personalized ads. You get paid whenever an ad is shown to you.

Gener8

Gener8 is a browser extension that you can install on Google Chrome or Firefox. As you navigate the web with the extension activated, you will see ads tailored to you based on the preferences you selected on the platform.

Every time an ad is shown, you get a percentage of the revenue generated to Gener8. At the moment, it’s 100%. If Gener8 earns $50, you get the same value. According to its founder, the company will get a cut of the transaction in the future. It won’t be 100% anymore.

Your earnings are as tokens, not actual money. You can exchange it for products available in the Gener8 own marketplace, which includes donating to charities.

As you see in the Gener8 marketplace screenshot below, in the right upper corner, I already have 11 tokens. I earned it only by registering on the platform. You get more tokens and unlock new features by inviting users as well.

As the CEO Sam Jones describes in this video, a user can earn on average £5–25 a month (equivalent in tokens).

It’s important to highlight that your data is shared through Gener8 only if you wish to do so. You can choose the privacy mode, which makes your information fully protected against third parties.

Brave Ads

Brave Ads is the American competitor. It works similarly, but it pays in Basic Attention Token (BAT). It’s a blockchain-based digital token used for advertising described in this white paper.

Also, instead of working via browser extension, it’s an actual browser that you need to download and install.

Contrary to Gener8, which gives back to the user 100% of the revenue made off of advertisers, Brave Ads pays 70% worth of BATs. In other words, Brave Ads takes a cut of 30% from the revenue made from your data.

BATs is like any other cryptocurrencies. There are not many ways you can directly spend on products. You can exchange for cash, Bitcoin, etc., on cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

Conclusion

When I first heard about how platforms like Gener8 and the idea of getting paid for your data, I got all excited. It’s an interesting approach (as long as it doesn’t hear the conversations between my wife and me).

The amount you get is small but definitely is better than nothing. I see it as a fairer game than the one Facebook or Google plays.

The efforts to protect your data and the enhancements of privacy laws should continue in parallel with the model that Gener8 or Brave Ads is trying to create. Accepting to receive money for the data that you allow to be used is not an encouragement to use other personal information that you don’t permit doing so.

I wonder if Google or Facebook will join the party and also start paying for your personal information. I don’t see why they would do that. Only if out of pity. Or if they’re forced to do it, which is the goal of the Data Dividend project. It’s a controversial proposal by Andrew Yang.

Let me know what you think about it in the comments. Thanks for reading.