We have been experimenting with Brave for about two months now, with mixed emotions.

While the intentions may be noble, and the world needs a browser that respects privacy, while returning back to its users some of their revenues, Brave messed up with execution. Hopefully, someone from their team will get to read this.

Advertisers

Although we didn't get to advertise on Brave, we managed to get some numbers from the number of ads displayed and the reward we received as users, to come up with an average CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). The truth is we were not impressed at all. Provided that for each ad displayed the average user receives roughly 0.05 BAT, based on Brave's guidelines, publishers receive another 0.0215 BAT, and Brave takes about 5% of that (that's 0.001 BAT). This means that the average impression costs advertisers some 0.0715 BAT, or a CPM rate of about 71.5 BATs (or about US$14.30 at current BAT/USD rates).

Hold on a minute Brave. Facebook is selling targeted ads for half that CPM (in some markets at rates even lower than that). Why on earth, would an advertiser pay double the ad cost while at the same time is losing the benefit of targeting, even in its simplest form of gender/age.

Even if the browser is filtering ads to display based on previously visited websites, in order to get some kind of targeting, lack of any other form of targeting (apart from geo-targeting), is subtracting value from ads bought from the advertiser point of view.

Let's face the reality: Brave is an expensive option for advertisers, compared to most other web media out there.

Publishers

Things are not better for the second side of the triangle: the publishers. First, because it's unclear how (and if) they receive that 30% of the ad revenue. The only revenue publishers can actually make for allowing Brave ads on their properties, is donations by users.

Agreed, it's easier for a user to make a donation by just tapping or clicking a button, but it is not much different than a donation button using a credit card or PayPal. Nothing new or revolutionary here either.

The only revolutionary part in the publisher's side, is the fact that Brave is posing a minimum net earnings threshold of 5 BATS (or about $1) to actually pay publishers what they are owed. So, if you run a not very popular, or relatively fresh blog, be rest assured that you will make much more by hosting your blog on Publish0x, than by verifying your blog with Brave.

But Brave doesn't stop on keeping a minimum amount to make payments to publishers. They also keep 5% of the publisher's revenue - regardless whether it comes from donations, ads, or referral income. So, although your visitors believe they donated to you 10 BATs, you actually receive only 9.5 BATs.

Users

The third side of the triangle is the weakest one. Brave does deliver its privacy features; nobody can deny that. But when it comes to user compensation, that's another story.

Before anything, even if Brave could manage to get enough ads to show its users up to the maximum limit, this would translate to roughly 0.25 BAT per hour, or about $0.05. Now, unless someone is using Brave at work, users are compensated about 0.5 BAT per day, even if they receive 5 notifications per hour (they don't). 2 BATs max, if they use it at work. Most users however, will be compensated with 4-5 BATs per month. Up to 50 if they are lucky. Quite a few, won't make even a single BAT. Now, at current rates, 5 BATs is about $1. 50 BATs is about $10.

But low compensation is only one aspect. The other is that even if you manage to accumulate 3 or 4 BATs for the whole month (or whatever amount), chances are a user won't be receiving them in their wallet. Brave forums are full of horror stories of users not receiving accumulated BATs for months, or receiving only part of the BATs they are owed. Not to mention the horror stories where BATs getting disappeared with no apparent reason.

Another aspect is referral fees. Brave will only compensate its referring users for new users that not only download their browser, but also are actively using it for the whole month. So, if someone refers a new user who is not moving to make Brave his/her default browser, Brave will say that the new user is not an eligible referral.

Bottom line

Brave managed to create a system that can disappoint even the warmer fans, no matter what side of the triangle they sit on. Little (if any) returns for the user's time, systems that don't work as expected, partnerships that restrict users on how they use the browser, is recipe for disaster.

If they don't take the brave decision to fix what's broken - and there is loads of work to be undertaken - they won't be with us for long.