I want to completely block trackers, but allow ads, but they seem to be a single setting, which is annoying. I frequent good sites that rely on ads for income, and I wish to support them, but I don’t want any platform tracking me. Is this something that’s likely to be changed in the browser settings?
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Hello @Cee
most of the tracker are part of the ads but if you trust the site and want to allow it to show you ads then you can turn off shield for it
hope that help and have a nice day
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I’m currently on my Android, running Brave Nightly, and we can see this toggle under Privacy (see screenshot)
EDIT: I checked Android Release channel and it’s there too.
What environment are you referring to?
I’m running it on Apple gear.
Thanks, @justsomeone1 
The tracking I want to block is Google, FB, etc. I still want to be served ads. Ad providers can utilise tracking, but they don’t require it to serve ads, AFAIK. I will disable shield for the site.
you welcome
by the way somesite serve ads from google and fb and other company that track user also so it would be hard to split them but maybe the brave team has solution
and have a nice day
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Yeah. I think I’d want to block Google and FB ads, if they use my authenticated presence on their own sites.
You too
Hi @Cee!
Congrats on the first post, and welcome to the Community.
After reading the question, the answer is a bit more complicated than a simple yes/no.
I can go into some detail about that here.
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Brave’s shield settings for tracking protection combines both ad requests and trackers in the same switch. This is because Brave permits 1st party ads served from the publisher site to display by default.
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This gets a little complicated, simply by the fact that the vast majority of publishers and creators are serving ads from Google and other 3rd party ad servers to their site.
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Brave blocks requests to those 3rd party servers that serve the ads, because (and this is what really sucks about ad tech), even the requests to the ad server (before any ads are specifically matched to you) contain personal information. Location, site and ad views for that site are passed back to the ad server in advance of them serving you anything.
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So, what often happens, is publishers will include an image behind the ad slot that will display when ads are being blocked, basically as a fallback.
Brave basically treats the ad requests to 3rd party ad servers as trackers (because they are).
The other thing that makes this difficult, is for situations like the one you described.
- You want to see the publisher/creator earn from the ad.
- You don’t want your privacy invaded by tracking and data collection associated with that ad.
The problem is, even if we did create a separate toggle that would allow for only the banner ad to display without any of the tracking, the reality is that the publisher you want to support would not end up receiving any financial benefit.
This is what’s so inherently messed up with monetization through digital advertising. The industry has basically made it a business requirement to track users in order for publishers to receive revenue. I spent many years working with advertisers and publishers, and even in cases where publishers have their own reporting system or their own vendor to report ad delivery (or even the ad server reporting itself), none of that ends up mattering because the agency or exchange that the ad is served from requires their reporting for billing purposes.
This is one of the main reasons why we created the BAT and an alternative token-based flow for serving ads and rewarding publishers, so we could provide users with the option to view ads that don’t invade their privacy, and also support creators.
I hope that this helps, and again, welcome to the Community!
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