Privacy-focused, rewarded ads browser Brave tops 10M monthly active users

Brave said it has seen a surge in user adoption since releasing version 1.0 of its privacy-centric browser on November 13, 2019. Monthly active users (MAU) have doubled in a year to 10.4 million as of the end of last month.

DAUs. Daily active users of the browser created by Mozilla founder Brendan Eich have tripled in the last year to 3.3 million, the company said Friday.

Ad platform that rewards users. Brave Ads are structured to serve only to users that opt-in to the Brave Rewards program and agree to see ads. Users can then accumulate Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT), which is a blockchain-based system. Users get 70 percent of the ad revenue share “as a reward for their attention,” and publishers are allocated tokens in proportion to the amount of time users spend on their sites.

Ads are targeted based on search and browsing data and machine learning models to build up profiles of users’ interests — that data lives solely on users’ devices.

Brave Verified content creators. There are now nearly 340,000 creators across YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Vimeo and other platforms that have signed on to Brave’s token payments program from Brave users. There were just 28,000 verified creators at the start of 2019.

Why we should care. To be certain, Brave’s market share doesn’t even register among the competition of Chrome, Safari, Edge, etc., but its growth trajectory indicates there is a market for services that cater to privacy concerns as consumer awareness and regulatory measures and scrutiny increase. The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has also reported a surge in query activity this year. Text ads on the platform are syndicated by Microsoft Advertising.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.