Brave’s ad-blocking browser raises $4.5 million
Brendan Eich’s Brave web browser, which is annoying publishers by sticking its nose into the ad flow on its users’ behalf, has raised US$4.5 million in new funding, bringing its funding total to about $7 million for the year. Brave launched last year with a browser that speeds up page load times by axing ads and trackers, inserting its own partnered ads into that hollowed-out inventory and sharing that revenue with publishers.
Read more at WSJ.com
Facebook has beaten ad blockers
Ad blocking seems to be a bigger problem for those further down the innovation ladder. While newspapers and smaller-scale online players are fighting to keep ads on screens, Google and Facebook seem to have side-stepped the issue through scale and investment. “Facebook is a textbook example of how technology enshrines advantage. While it was prey to ad blockers when most users preferred computers, it’s played a blinder in the shift to mobile. The ads within the mobile Facebook app (and its photo-sharing app Instagram) can’t be stripped out by blockers. They’re delivered by Facebook servers with none of the usual identifiers.”
Read more at Bloomberg.com
Quantifying the hope of a blocker-free future
The latest wave of research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau attempting to identify who blocks ads and why has emerged. The “who” seems to be men 18-24, and “why” is in-line with what we’ve been hearing for a while now: improved online experience. But as Barry Levine points out at Marketingland.com, this new batch of numbers adds some key new data for marketers to ponder — data that shows that “if ads were more relevant or less annoying or less privacy-invading or loaded quicker, most if not all users of ad blockers would stop using them, or would delete the one they have, or would not download one?” Apparently, the IAB has found this “missing stat.”
Read more at Marketingland.com
