{"id":12461,"date":"2021-09-26T19:44:26","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T19:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dataethics.eu\/?p=12461"},"modified":"2021-10-24T16:48:51","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T16:48:51","slug":"basic-attention-tokens-a-user-centric-model-for-online-advertisement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dataethics.eu\/da\/basic-attention-tokens-a-user-centric-model-for-online-advertisement\/","title":{"rendered":"Basic Attention Tokens \u2013 a User Centric Model for Online Advertisement?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the focus on human attention as a valuable resource and the relentless fight for capturing and keeping users\u2019 attention, one could ask why users themselves are not directly compensated for their attention? Why is it the platform providers and not the \u201cattention providers\u201d (the users) that get rewarded?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, free online services are designed to nudged and influence people into using their platform to collect user data and sell advertisements. Once the platforms have captured people\u2019s attention it becomes a valuable commodity that can be traded and sold. This creates a system where platforms are incentivised to manipulate users into becoming addicted to their platforms and accept data profiling. In the current system, users are subjected to privacy loss and manipulation, they also face high load time, high data costs, malvertisement and shorter battery life. According to Basic Attention Token white paper<\/a> \u201c\u2026 the average users end up paying up to $23 a month to download ads, trackers, scripts and other related data.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publishers also suffer in the current advertisement ecosystem as third-party players providing market analysis and online platforms for advertisements takes a good chunk of the revenue. From each middleman in the transaction the publisher lose revenue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skip the Expensive Middleman<\/strong>
The advertisement ecosystem consists of users, publishers, advertisers and middlemen. What if the middlemen could be skipped so advertisers instead would pay users directly for their attention in an opt-in privacy protecting system? Some people are working on that idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brave browser have launched blockchain-based tokenized system that allows Basic Attention Tokens (BAT)<\/a> to be paid directly to users and publishers. When an advertisement is made a token is \u201cconnected to it\u201d. When a user gives attention to the advertisement the token is \u201cunlocked\u201d and hereafter shared directly between the user, the publisher and the browser (in this case Brave<\/a>). Users can currently donate their tokens to their favourite content creators but in the future such tokens might be used to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n