Brave ads based on browser behavior? Really?

[Peregrino69]

So a couple of days ago I enabled ads for Brave Rewards. According to the brave://rewards page

“Earn tokens by viewing Brave Ads. Ads presented are based on your interests, as inferred from your browsing behavior.”

This seems to be a very incorrect statement. My browser keeps showing me ads related to cryptocurrencies, and only cryptocurrencies, which is very weird, considering that I have never opened a single cryptocurrency-related page with Brave. With this system even the number of crypto-related news articles I’ve checked can be counted with fingers of one hand.

So could someone please explain how is it again that ads shown to me are based on browser behavior? They certainly aren’t related to my browsing behavior, so is the privacy-oriented browser connecting to some crypto-related resources behind my back, or are some advertisers paying to have their ads shown?

Cheerio
PG69

What OS/Brave version are you using?

Brave	1.19.92 Chromium: 88.0.4324.152 (Official Build) (x86_64)
Revision	6579930fc53b4dc589c042bec9d0a3778326974d-refs/branch-heads/4324@{#2106}
OS	macOS Version 10.14.6 (Build 18G7016)

[eljuno]

The last item from this FAQ

Brave Ads FAQ

[Mattches]

In fact, the whole FAQ @eljuno will be useful for you. Additionally, ads you receive are based on your browsing behavior and activity but not only based on that. There are a variety of other factors at play, such as what region you are located in, what campaigns are running in that region, etc. You also only enabled the feature two days ago and have not given it the time to train.

[Peregrino69]

Thanks @Mattches & @eljuno.

I’m sure you can see how the ad behavior is a bit confusing, as all my web browsing since enabling the ads has been on sites related to networking, Win10 and Linux with a smattering of Youtube and some news sites… let’s see if they get any more meaningful in the future.