I accidentally activated my vpn (ProtonVPN) in Brave, what do I do? I activated it for a few seconds and I got a japanese ad? I use two browsers and I opened the Brave browser with the VPN activated, will this affect my BATs rewards?
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It may, may not. I’ve done it myself on more than one occasion but it seems to have not much of an impact. Still, wouldn’t recommend doing it.
I would suggest you to turn off brave ads whenever using a VPN. Using VPN with brave ads on a regular basis may lead to your account to be flagged or even suspended.
Shouldn’t have any effect (most likely), Chris (Project manager of Brave rewards) confirmed on a community call that VPN alone will not cause a flag for the account. There’s more factors which the system considers while flagging so don’t worry.
You can also refer to the below post for more info. Thanks!
@lianwuu20 yes and no. Brave does use IP address to serve ads. If you received an ad for another country than your Rewards country, which had been verified in Uphold or whatever, then you won’t be paid for that ad. And if this continued to happen, the system could determine you’re trying to “game the system” and abuse Rewards. At that time, would mean you could get flagged/suspended.
That said, the tricky part is they say VPN alone isn’t enough to get anyone flagged. I just say take that with a grain of salt as the majority of people who had complained about being flagged over the past 5 years have pretty much all been people who were using VPN to appear in other countries than their own.
When they say VPN alone isn’t enough to get you flagged, that’s true. As I think they are saying if you use VPN to appear in your own country then you’ll never have an issue. But if it’s to appear like you’re in a different country, then there’s going to be an issue.
But for just a few seconds would it flag you? I doubt it.
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I’ve been using Proton VPN for three years. At first I saw no difference, and in the last year the ad rewards have dwindled to pretty much nothing. Maybe 2 or 3 cents. I have my VPN set in my home state. I believe it is the VPN causing me to not get any rewards. I would like to find out how to fix this issue by possibly white-listing my VPN, during browser use.
@VeeVets VPN or IP address would not necessarily have any impact on how much we earn per ad (beyond you don’t get paid for ads from outside your country). You are correct in that ad prices dropped. Toward the end of the Covid period, ad revenue was down for all businesses. Not only that, but the impact of everything that has happened with FTX, Genesis/Gemini, Binance, etc kind of caused some big interruptions in the crypto world.
Ad revenue is still down overall. To quote from AI:
Yes, ad revenue is still down, according to a major media agency that predicts that traditional media ad revenue will stagnate or decline in 2024.
There is some potential upswing with crypto tokens increasing and advertising slowly returning. Such as:
According to Digiday, digital advertising is expected to grow 7.2% in 2024, up from 5.5% in 2023.
You’ll also have seen that Solana went from nearly $20 to recently hitting near $200 (currently at about $182).
And BAT had been down to like $0.17 for a short period and recently had gotten above $0.30 (currently at $0.29).
Brave is cautious on making big adjustments to how much BAT we earn per ad. Overall prices have decreased or stagnated due to the decreases I mentioned above. Though you can also see where I made an attempt a while ago to explain ad prices and all. That topic is at PSA: BAT Ad Prices Explained (kind of)
All of that just goes down to that yes, pay has dropped. I used to average 15-20 BAT per month, with some months even seeing as high as 50. But lately, I’m lucky if I get anywhere near 10 BAT.
- March = 8.5
- February = 7.55
- January = 6.29
- December = 3.91
- November = 4.48
- October = 11.53
- September = 14.96
List goes on. So yeah, it’s just Brave. And if you have any more doubts, all we ever have to do is look at https://brave.com/transparency/ and look at Brave initiated BAT purchases. Those purchases are how they fund our Rewards payments.
If you go back to like 2022, they were buying 200,000+ BAT a few times each month. Then in 2022 actually started buying millions of BAT each month, which is when we all did very well on payments. But now, they are only buying every few months. So went from buying monthly (or multiple times a month) from ad campaigns to buying in April, June, November, and now March. Obviously some gaps there where they aren’t buying every month anymore.
Basically, us seeing slowdown on them buying BAT tells us their marketing team is doing a horrible job of selling ads and Brave has been able to stretch out payments with what they have in their possession without buying more.
Thank you for the reply. I didn’t expect one as I have posted on the community before and never got an answer. Thanks also for the complete and understandable explanation of the rewards program. Wasn’t too worried as I’m just using this as a learning tool. If I earn something, that’s a bonus.
Thanks again
Steve Vedder.
Just a heads up. After I saw you mention that, I wanted to look to see what was missed. When it comes to your own topics,. it seems you never made one:
But I do see there’s been three comments. There’s 2 from this topic and one from long ago where you shared your ticket number (and I’m assuming they replied to you in email and resolved the issue, as you’re earning BAT now, right? )
I’m not employed by Brave but I definitely try to bounce around and help people as best I can. I touch on all topics but primarily am focused on Rewards and some simpler technical stuff.
If I’m missing something, by all means do let me know. But we always try to get back to people. With the number of posts and topics each day, it can be easy to miss or forget someone. So key piece of advice I give is to tag people to send notifications, such as @VeeVets, or to at least make sure you come back to your topic every once in a while…especially if you can do so when you see us actively responding to other people (as it likely will appear in Latest portion and draw attention)
I have been receiving very miniscule amounts. Less than 1 BAT per month since Jun. 2023. I got 1.4 BAT than. I may have gotten frustrated about posting.
Thanks again for responding. I do look at all the posts in my email I receive once per week.
Not sure what country you’re in, but you should easily be getting more than that. If you aren’t, then issue might be in device settings and/or what you’re doing with your browser. For example, many OS now have something like Focus Assist which will stop notifications from appearing during set hours or when it sees you busy doing things. Also Brave tries not to send notifications when you’re playing games or watching videos, especially if it’s in full screen.
That aside, you should be using Dashboard for your New Tab Page and have Sponsored Images available. These tend to be the bulk of ads most people see.
And if you have Brave News enabled, you should scroll through and check daily news. There are ads that can appear mixed in that can help you on BAT. I don’t check news on my Desktop as much as I probably should, or I could be getting a lot more BAT. But just to show you how ads go for me:
Notice how half the ads I see, roughly, are NTP ads? And if I checked Brave News on my Desktop instead of my iPhone, I’d probably have another 50-300 ads there as well.
Those are what adds up to my current estimate between 5-8 BAT for my Desktop.
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So I have Focus Assist off. I am here in USA using a desktop with the now updated version. I am also using the Dashboard on the new tab page., however I will admit I do not scroll through the news. If that’s the trick so to speak I will start doing that more often and observe the results.
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