I understand that if I connect a custodial wallet I will receive 70% revenue share from Brave Ads. I can then choose to either keep this myself or send some/all of it to content creators via auto-contribute or tips.
But if I use Brave in “Creator Support Only” mode (no custodial wallet connected), what percentage of Brave Ad revenue goes to content creators? Is it the same amount I would receive if I had connected a custodial wallet or is it less?
Thanks
I suppose 95% since 5% is taken by brave as tipping fee. I’ll tag @steevm to clarify it.
@o99 The percentage stays the same. What happens is that 70% you would have earned gets divided up among the websites you visit, based on your attention. So if you spend 100% of your time on a particular website, they’ll get all of your BAT. However, if you visit hundreds or thousands of sites each week, it will divide amongst them based on how much you engaged with their content.
That said, some of that might go to Brave in some situations. For example, this website (Brave Community) is a verified creator. Therefore if you spend a lot of time here, some of it would be tipped to Brave.
Lastly, it’s important to remember that 5% gets deducted from whatever we tip to try to help cover the gas fees and other costs associated with tipping. So if you tip me $5 worth of BAT, I’ll only receive $4.50 worth.
Thanks. So am I understanding correctly that if I want creators to have as much of the ad revenue as possible, it makes no difference if I connect a custodial wallet (with auto-contribute at max) or just use “creator support only” mode?
In both cases the verified creators that I visit will (collectively) receive 66.5% of the ad revenue that I would receive if I chose to connect a custodial wallet and keep it all for myself?
66.5 % = 70% x 95%
I understand that its only with a custodial wallet connected that I gain the ability to exclude certain creators or give extra tips, but aside from that it makes no difference?
It depends what you mean. The difference between you creating a custodial wallet or not is whether you want direct control over who gets all the BAT. If you aren’t connected to a custodial account, such as Uphold, then you have almost no control at all beyond just limiting yourself to ONLY interacting with a particular site and nowhere else (which isn’t realistic, lol) If connected to a custodial account, you get to choose who to tip or can keep the BAT for yourself (or can choose to auto-contribute still if you want)
I’m too tired to validate the math, but it sounds about right. Small part of my brain is saying something about that isn’t right, but it’s probably the dumb part of me, lol.
That said, what you’re referencing is the total ad revenue. This means the percentage of what Brave charged for the ads you saw, not percentage of the BAT you’ve earned. I believe you already are acknowledging this and said it clearly, but I’m mentioning it for anyone else who might see it and misunderstand.
Pretty much. So like right now, let’s pretend I’m visiting your site. I can choose to engage with your site and leave no tip. Or I can click on things and send a tip your way of whatever I wish it to be. However, if I wasn’t connected, then you’re going to get something from me regardless, especially if I spend a decent amount of time engaged with your content.
Of course, this can matter a lot to some people. I mean it in that I might visit websites that have views I strongly dislike and would never want to support. Well, if I’m not connected to a custodial account, that website will be getting money “from me” through auto-contribute just because I engaged with their website when I was reading an article shared with me.
I mean if we disregard voluntary tips, I’d like to know if the amount of ad revenue collectively received by creators (regardless or which creators ultimately receive it) is the same for the following setups?
From your answers, I believe the total amount received by creators will be the same?
Out of curiosity, why has it been designed this way? I don’t quite understand why the ability to exclude sites from auto-contribute necessarily needs to be coupled to presence of custodial wallet (its seems to be to be a bit arbitrary).
Thanks
Yes. They still get the BAT and the 5% taken off regardless. So you’d say that collectively, out of everything earned and tipped, it works the same. Again, with the biggest difference being that in one method you get to see how much BAT is earned and have control over who gets it. Without custodial account, you’re just shown - - for balance. So you’ll never know how much earned or tipped from viewing ads.
You have to look at the original intent with Brave and Rewards. Since the browser is blocking ads by default, it is taking away revenue from websites. The purpose here was to hope people would be participating in the privacy preserving and less intrusive ads from Brave as a means to support those websites that are otherwise losing all their profit.
On paper, the average person would be tipping all or most of what they earned through participation in Rewards. Then content creators would see this happening and would have more incentive to stop putting traditional ad banners and pop-up ads on their sites, while also perhaps recommending Brave to those who visited their site. As things shift that way, you’d have a safer internet with less trackers, malware, etc.
I think this is why Auto-Contribute still works as it does, as it still kind of carries that original hope and intent. However, they added other options for those who wanted to be greedy or who wanted more control.
These are recent changes. It used to be that you could earn BAT even if you weren’t connected to a custodial account. Everyone was also able to tip as they please to any website or could specify auto-contribute amount and let it do it automatically.
What happened though is there was a lot of fraud and abuse of the system. People who are in regions that couldn’t be supported by custodial partners due to regulations were then trying to circumvent restrictions by offering to sell tips to people. So a “I’ll tip you my 10 BAT and you send me 5” or whatever. You had people who were also setting up emulators running many instances of Brave to maximize earnings with the intent to do this, often using methods where they weren’t doing KYC/AML.
This could get Brave in a lot of trouble if they permitted it to keep happening, as it would be said they are allowing money laundering to occur or that it was directly allowing the funding of crime. Due to the excessiveness of people doing this, Brave changed the system to what it is now. You can read some about it at https://brave.com/rewards-changes/
Thanks.
Have now read the link you provided. From that and from your examples I understand why removing vBAT system and why removal of ability to do manual (on demand) tips without custodial account helps prevent abuse of the system.
But I still don’t understand how exclusion of of auto-contribute filters from creator support only mode is related to prevention of abuse.
Well, think about how it can be used. If it’s enabled that you can choose which Creators not to support, then is it not the same as just letting them choose which to support? So they could block all sites except one. Then used that to push the BAT to just the one site. They’d then do this on as many devices as possible and we’d be back to square 1.
-NOTE-
I want it to be clear this is my own view and understanding. I’ve tried to have discussions on this with various people at Brave and they are restricted on what they can answer on it. I’m not saying how I’ve phrased it is 100% correct. It’s just me trying my best to explain how things are from what I’ve seen and heard. So use it as a basic understanding is all.
Also important to realize these changes may not be permanent. It’s just the step they are taking now after having such high rates of fraud and abuse for a while. Not to mention how many laws and regulations are changing around the world. As things stabilize a bit, I’m sure they’ll add more options to people. It’s just something we’re having to deal with for now.
I still don’t understand why the absence of an auto-contribute filter helps . If someone wanted to abuse the “creator support only” mode surely they wouldn’t be using the browser like a normal person. They’d use the browser to only visit a single verified site (or only visit a single verified site + a bunch of non-verified sites). Maybe Brave have other mechanisms to protect against this but I can’t see how absence of an auto-contribute filter would be one - it only seems to remove useful functionality for users who browse normally.
This discussion of potential for abuse has me wondering if the following is actually correct.
Is there actually an official Brave page which actually explains how BAT is distributed to creators in “creator support only” mode? The reason I started this thread is that I couldn’t locate one. But perhaps one does exist?
One way I can think of to prevent abuse is that in “creator support only” mode the distribution to verified sites is not directly mapped to ads and attention associated with individual browsers but is instead mapped to collective ad revenue and collective attention (across all users in creator support only mode). But this would mean the distribution approach is very different to what I wrote above.
To explain by example
Distribution based on individual browser usage: Lets say I saw enough ads to be entitled to 1 BAT revenue share and I only visited one verified. Based on my earlier understanding (the quote above) that 1 BAT (minus the 5% tip commission) would go to to that one site (even in creator support only mode). From what I understand from the above, this has potential for abuse (only visit that one site in order to maximise its revenue).
Distribution based on collective usage of all users in creator support only mode": Lets assume all users in “creator support only” mode viewed enough ads to collectively generate 100 BAT revenue share. Lets also assume that the one verified site I visited represented only a tiny proportion (e.g. 0.001%) of the attention of all users in creator support only mode (because no one else is visiting that site). The distribution to that shady site would then be much less than if it were only based on individual browser ads + attention.
I believe in creator support mode distributions are based on individual browser usage (I asked about this before). If you click on the triangle while visiting those sites you can see a percentage based how much attention you give when visiting each creator’s page. My friend and I have been testing out your theory out since April by visiting and navigating each other’s sites, but we have yet to see any earnings in our connected publisher accounts, so still not convinced it works in practice! 
Yeah, uncertain. Lack of transparency on that is big issue from me. I’ve turned off Brave Rewards on my iPhone since can’t see a running tally or anything. I still think they went the wrong way with what they are doing. I think they should kept vBAT but not in the same format. Actually have let it remain as a customer rewards that was restricted to in network things, like premium services on Brave or something. Heck, maybe even to do small things like get custom backgrounds or something.
All of that said, I’m also getting to understand things a bit better. Brave is trying to pinch pennies and spend as little as they can. This is why Brave Talk is handled by Jitsi Meet, Brave Wallet was kind of build on the framework of Metamask if I remember correctly, Rewards pretty much is all handled by custodial partners, VPN is done through Guardian, majority of the browser is Chromium, etc. Then Brave just tweaks things and adds small bits of their own code to customize it and make it a bit unique.
Teams tend to be less than 10. You have like 5 or so people on Support. Less than 10 on Search. Not sure how many developers on each area. If you compare to most other browsers, Brave doesn’t really have the staff it needs. The reason I’m mentioning this part is I think it just would have required more effort and money than they could afford to use at this time, so it went the way they did. It’s the most cost efficient way that helps on profit and to reduce the amount of work needed.
Completely agree, and lets not forget BAT merchandise (do they even do that still)? BAT caps, T’s, that kinda thing to spread the word.
I get that. Brave is still a relatively new company, and considering the giants they are up against (Edge, Mozilla, Chrome, etc.) they really have achieved a lot. My personal view is that they got a too ambitious a little too early. For me, they should/could have left Brave Talk, Wallet and VPN for later and focused on improving on what was a brilliant browser and rewards offering, but now seems to be suffering more and more issues. Having been around from back in those days, such is my experience. As you say, it would seem they are overstretched and sadly, I am less enthusiastic about Brave than I was back then - too many issues.
Still, because they started here in Cayman and their browser for me at least is still far superior to the usual offerings (other than RAM usage) I stick with them. Like to support the little man with no resources who goes up against giants with endless resources!
I didn’t notice that, and have since connected a custodial wallet, so unable to explore creator support only mode at the moment. Any ideas how to go back to creator support only mode after you have connected a wallet? I don’t see any option to disconnect the wallet in brave://rewards
In creator support only mode, do you know if that attention percentage you mentioned is just the current month activity, or is it continuous? Do you get any kind of monthly report summarising how your attention across sites has contributed to distributions to creators (or how it is supposed to be contributing)?
Well I was a creator N Brave rewards helped with what ever they asked N I received nothing in the last 4 months
Well obviously I started with Brave until they asked me about creators wize guy focus
Yes, they removed it. To go to only creator support mode, reset brave rewards.
Beware, your Uphold / Gemini will be connected and if your region becomes unsupported then you won’t be able to connect back.
I don’t see a “reset brave rewards” option in Brave on my Android device.
Although I do see it on my Windows PC, its the Android devices that I’d like to revert to creator support only mode.
On android, go to brave settings → brave rewards → reset brave rewards
Thanks
Why do they put options/settings in different places on desktop and mobile??? Not the first time I’ve encountered something like this!