An Additional Counter to Show Reconciled/Processed Earnings

Few pointers to begin with-

  • The Ad Rewards (0.01 BAT, 0.005 BAT etc.) are accumulated by the browser in Current earnings this month (estimated) and in the background they are periodically sent to the rewards server (in a few hours to a few days) to be reconciled/processed.

  • The counter Current earnings this month (estimated) shows all the ads viewed this month + roll-over balances of previous months. Both of which are not necessarily reconciled/processed.

  • It is the Rewards that has been reconciled/processed in a month, comes as a payout. And remaining ones are rolled over to next month’s Current earnings this month (estimated).

Last month (Feb 2022) Ads were not getting reconciled properly which led to large roll-over balance for many users this month (March 2022). And the scale of this issue could be detected only when new month clicked over.

So, can we have an additional counter that shows Reconciled/Processed Earnings too. This will tell users throughout a month that this much of reward/BATs has been reconciled or “processed”. And users will also know, ahead, what at least is going to be the payout next month.

And if Ads are not getting reconciled/processed properly, meaning the difference between the counters of Estimated Earnings and Reconciled/Processed Earnings is growing large, say 1-2 BAT or more, then the issue can be detected sooner and we won’t have to wait for a whole month.

@Mattches @steeven @SaltyBanana

Same issue for me, sounds logical - not sure if this happened to everyone? curious why nobody is discussing this (maybe I missed the discussion(s))

Good idea

Bottom line is the message Your +X.XXX BAT February rewards will arrive in Y days (Mar 8) is a nice touch. Fingers crossed.

Yes. That bottom line currently shows processed earnings of last month. I just want something like this to show processed earnings of current month as well.

And this value of processed earnings will keep updating alongside but independent of Current earnings this month (estimated) throughout the month.

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That might be a good thing to add. Currently they are working on providing new stuff for better transparency. Not sure if you had seen the Github for https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/18159

Basically, trying to show better breakdown of things in a monthly statement of our earnings and tips/contributions.

They also are going to be working on differentiating between ad types, which you can see at https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/12692

None of those is quite what you’re suggesting, but it kind of makes it seem like they are taking steps in the right direction.

Not sure if showing each ad and whether it has been reconciled will occur within the browser, as there’s a lot of things to handle. But I guess we’ll give it time. Definitely appreciate the thought on it and hope they can get as close to the suggestion as possible for people.

Those issues on GitHub, like you said, are nothing close to what I am requesting.

Ads are reconciled in aggregates/batches so we won’t actually see each ad getting reconciled in Processed Earnings but Processed Earnings will increase by the aggregate amount of processed Ads. If this feature is implemented.

If I break it down more-

  1. Browser sends a confirmation for each Ad event to the Ads-server.

  2. Once server approves the confirmation, browser requests payment token for the Ad event.

  3. If everything is right, server sends a payment token for the Ad event.

    • Step 1, 2, 3 can be referred as processing of Ads (just my terminology nothing serious). So every processed Ad event will have a corresponding payment token.
  4. It is these payment tokens that are are redeemed in batches (in a few hours to a few days). And once redeemed, the corresponding Ads are marked as reconciled.

I am just requesting a counter somewhere that shows BAT value corresponding to the Ads that are reconciled this month (Processed earnings). As these processed earnings will come as a payout next month.

Hope you like my essay. :grin:

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And it is not that difficult to implement as reconciled Ad values are already stored in a local file and reconciled/Processed earnings can be calculated by summing all reconciled ad values of this month. Easy to do in a spreadsheet. But would be much convenient if browser sums it up for us.

Haha, it’s appreciated. I’ve been learning a lot as I ask questions and see others find solutions. I’ve been seeking as many “learning experiences” as possible here lately and trying to find the right people to help.

A few hours ago I wrote in to Brendan Eich and gave a little list of questions, to which he referred me to various people. But one of the things I had asked was:

Would it be possible for Ad History and estimated earnings to show which ads have been reconciled? This has recently been asked after nearly all users received much less than their estimated earnings for February payments and up to half or so “rolled forward” as part of March earnings.

Perhaps bad phrasing on my part? In any case, his answer to that was:

yes, ads history needs to go back into statements for prior months

That said, I’ve also reached out to the various people he was saying handle things like Rewards, Ads, etc and I’ll be hoping they can kind of answer things better on what’s possible and even if it’s something they are working toward.

So yeah, your essay may help me when/if I get to have those conversations, lol.

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A GitHub issue has been logged for this- https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/22233
Thanks to @Saoiray for taking it forward.