Ever since the inception of the internet, as far back as when Netscape, Microsoft’s first browser, was all the rage, ads have forever leveraged the boundless resource of user attention. With the inevitable future of Web 3.0 being implemented into our daily lives, we need to seriously address this growing elephant in the room. 

For decades, no one truly thought about how incredibly lucky we have been, as an industry, to have users’ attention available to us, on a whim, whenever we need it to be. From ad campaigns sprawled across Google, to pre-roll ads that one sees on YouTube – it is quite literally a miracle that no user has questioned this nonchalant behavior – that is, until recently. 

While AdBlock has forever been accessible to the general public, the truth of the matter is marketing, in essence, is a two-way street. While it benefits companies in the most obvious of ways, be it maintaining top of mind presence, increasing consideration, conversions and so forth – users need marketing and advertisements in order to grow their portfolio of personalized products.  

Therefore, AdBlock is moot and, in the long run, creates a lose-lose situation for all parties involved, in one sense or another. 

However, with Web 3.0 and blockchain on the rise, a new concept has emerged on the horizon – the ability for users to effectively monetize their attention, all the while ensuring that this very thing that we once took for granted is tracked, reported on and broken down for them in an easy-to-track chart. 

And ground zero for this revolutionary innovation – the Brave Browser. 

To avoid a full-blown sales pitch, here’s the gist; Brave runs as a regular browser with permanent AdBlock; that is until users choose to disable it – and in return they receive monetary compensation for each second that they spend viewing ads, in the form of BAT tokens (cryptocurrency), effectively monetizing their attention. 

And the cherry on top – they get full breakdowns of the time they have spent viewing ads, their earnings and the ability to scale back (or ramp up) the amounts of ads that they see. The beauty in this is just how powerful it can prove to be for us marketers. Brave aside, the concept is, in fact, so innovative, that it may change the way we view marketing metrics as a whole. For context, let me remind you of an age-old adage that many are too painfully familiar with – apathy is marketing’s kryptonite.  

When users normally browse online and are hit with a wave of ads, apathetic behavior arises all too quickly – ads no longer are ‘ads’ per se, but they become futile faux pas attempts at outreach. 

However, put Brave (or whoever creates the next attention monetizing platform next) into the mix and voila – users that turn AdBlock on are more willing to engage with ads, albeit the earnings element is most certainly a key driver as well. Therefore, in terms of metrics, players like Brave, refine commonly used performance metrics. Reach now no longer is a silly stat that almost everyone in the biz knows is relatively unimportant – reach now becomes reach to users that are actively willingly engaging with the ad ecosystem. 

Engagement is now more meaningful – targeting becomes more sophisticated as you are now not only targeting users that are within your audience demographics – but in fact are also willing to see and experience your brand during their browsing experience. 

Last but most certainly not the least – this creates an opportunity to get more accurate targeting data from the browser itself, increasing total throughput of ads on a more holistic level. While I’m not advocating that everyone jumps into Brave, what I’m trying to put through here is that there are millions of people now aware and actively engaging with this ecosystem – and as a result, we will almost certainly experience the commodification of attention in the foreseeable future. 

Join us fellow marketers – in this Brave new world.