You might run an ad blocker in your browser to cut website clutter and keep companies from tracking you online. But the ad-blocking Brave browser has another reason to intervene: to free up memory and preserve your battery life.

Detailed tests comparing Brave to Google’s dominant Chrome browser, with and without the Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin ad-blocking extensions, show that blocking ads can help reduce browsers’ ever-heavier use of precious computer memory on ad-heavy sites. Brave cuts memory use by 33 percent to 66 percent compared with ordinary Chrome, the company said Friday.

Memory is a precious resource on laptops and phones, critical to everything a device does. As browsers have increased in power, becoming full-fledged software foundations instead of just vessels for digital documents, memory usage has soared. But browsers are getting more assertive about displaying websites in ways that are good for those of us looking at them, not necessarily those publishing them.

Reader mode, tracking protection and ad blocking are some examples of browsers taking more control. Ad blocking helps not just with memory use, but also with power consumption, Brave has found.

“The primary savings come from blocking resource-hungry ads and trackers that popular sites are teeming with, especially news ones,” Brave Chief Scientist Ben Livshits told CNET in an exclusive interview. “In our research, we show that Brave consumes 40 percent less battery than popular browsers like Chrome, Edge and Firefox thanks to a combination of bandwidth savings and lower CPU pressure.”

Brave Software, founded by JavaScript inventor and former Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, got its start with an ad-blocking browser. But it isn’t opposed to ads. In fact, its business strategy relies on showing its own ads with its own technology designed to protect privacy and share some of the ad revenue with anyone using its browser. In its first phase, now in testing on personal computers, ads are shown in notifications that have no tracking scripts, animation, audio or video.

Brave Chrome ad-blocking memory test — Brave testing showed its browser using less memory usage than Google Chrome, with or without the AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin ad blockers. The four comparisons show results for a higher-end MacBook (W1) and less powerful MacBook Air (W2) making network requests from the US and UK. The test was on ad-heavy news sites where ad blocking saves memory and cuts power use.

Brave Software

Reducing memory use is a priority in the browser world. Google Chrome — whose open-source Chromium project is the foundation for Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and soon Microsoft Edge — is working on memory reductions. And Firefox has a whole project called MemShrink, a good thing since security improvements mean it won’t be as economical.

Memory is precious

New trends make memory even more precious. Websites are piling on ever more JavaScript code, and smartphones don’t typically have as much memory as laptops even though web developers want to build more advanced websites.

If you want to stick with Chrome, you can get most of Brave’s advantages with the uBlock Origin extension, Brave’s test showed. The AdBlock Plus extension actually increased memory use. The company measured memory usage with a number of websites, mostly news sites, on a powerful MacBook Pro, but it said its results were validated with an older, feebler MacBook Air.

Adblock Plus by default shows ads that comply with its “acceptable ads” policy. Disabling that reduces memory usage to about the level of Chrome and uBlock Origin, Livshits said. Adblock Plus developer Eeyo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Google, Apple and Microsoft didn’t comment.

“We’re very conscious of Firefox’s memory footprint, but efforts to decrease RAM must be balanced against features that make the browser faster, more responsive, and more secure,” Mozilla said in a statement. The upcoming Firefox 66, for example, will improve performance without requiring more memory. “We’ll continue to improve the resource efficiency of Firefox so it continues to run great for every user on whatever device they’re using,” Mozilla said.

Advantage evaporates on sites without ads

Brave’s memory advantages won’t carry over to websites that aren’t so heavily loaded with ads as those in the company’s test.

“Pages that are clean, such as Gmail or Wikipedia, would currently use the same amount of memory as on Chrome,” Livshits said. And your mileage may vary: “Power users tend to see high memory use regardless of browser or ad blocker,” because browsers cache more information for quick access, he added.

You could see websites get even easier on your hardware, too.

Brave is working on a new SpeedReader mode — a more aggressive alternative to browser reader modes that show reduced-clutter views of websites. SpeedReader is designed to block ads and trackers long before they burden the computer, increasing website display speeds by a factor of 20. That’ll bring benefits for memory and power usage, too.

“By focusing on allowing the least content possible for great content reading experience, it does not load any scripts (advertising or not) and even removes unimportant graphics,” Livshits said. “We haven’t run the exact same test to measure memory use in this scenario, but expect it to use a fraction of the memory of standard mode.”

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Brave, a browser that blocks conventional online ads and strips privacy-invading trackers off the web, has begun testing its own technology for supplying advertisements.

The startup, co-founded by former Firefox leader Brendan Eich, announced a special test version of Brave that will show about 250 prepackaged ads to those who sign up for an early-access version of the software. It’ll expand that test later in June, Brave said in a blog post Tuesday.

It’s an opt-in system, so you won’t see ads unless you specifically enable the feature. “We see users opting in already,” Eich said Wednesday.

Then, in the coming months, a more significant part of the company’s plan begins: a system that pays you with Brave’s crypto-tokens if you view or interact with ads. The key difference from conventional ads is that the browser itself chooses them from a catalog, basing its choices on its observation of your online interests but not sharing that information outside the browser. In contrast, today’s ad companies track you online from one site to another, building a profile of your behavior and interests that’s beyond your control.

It’s been hard to sell people on privacy-focused services and software. But privacy has a chance to become a bigger deal right now as developments like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal highlight the massive scale and technological sophistication of online tracking.

Brave shipped its first ad-blocking browser in 2016, with Eich likening the move to “putting chlorine in the pool.” There already were plugins that would block ads and online behavior tracking, but Brave helped accelerate the technology’s spread. Mozilla’s Firefox is making it steadily easier to block ad trackers, and Apple’s latest Safari cracks down, too, with an updated version of its intelligent tracking protection feature.

Brave is built on the core, open-source technology of Google’s Chrome browser, which dominates web browser usage. Relying on Google helps Brave with website compatibility but also means the company could spend its funding on other engineering work like researching better tracker-blocking technology than the human-curated lists used today.

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo

Brave’s development has three phases, named after the US space missions of the 1960s and early 1970s: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. The Mercury phase began last year as Brave launched its basic attention token (BAT), a payment mechanism using cryptocurrency foundations. Along with that came versions of Brave that send BAT to websites, YouTube publishers and Twitch videogame streamers.

You can buy BAT, but Brave also has doled the tokens out in various promotional efforts to get people on board. So far BAT aren’t good for much beyond paying your frequently visited websites, but eventually Brave hopes you’ll be able to use them to unlock premium content with easy one-off payments.

The new in-browser ad system is part of the Gemini phase. The idea is to let advertisers use BAT to pay publishers for showing ads, but Brave users and Brave itself also get a cut. After the ad system test expands beyond Tuesday’s initial step, you’ll get get 70 percent of the BAT payments as a Brave user.

Brave is free for Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS devices, but right now the payment and ad system only works on the version for personal computers.

In the third phase, Apollo, Brave expects its system to produce “real ad revenue.” Also expected is the possibility that the BAT payment system will spread beyond Brave. In a tweet Tuesday, though, Eich declined to say which other software that might be, but said there will be a software developer kit to make it easier.

First published June 19, 1:19 p.m. PT.

Update, June 20, 8:41 a.m. PT: Adds that Brave uses an opt-in ad system and comment from CEO Brendan Eich.

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Brave Software has embarked on the next phase of its plan to get you to use its browser — and to build a privacy-first alternative to today’s online ad industry.

The Brave browser blocks ads and ad trackers by default, a move that makes pages load faster and eliminates some prying into our lives online. But the startup doesn’t want to rid the world of ads, only to come up with a system that delivers them with more privacy and security and fewer middlemen.

Brave Software’s lion logo

Brave Software

Brave already lets you contribute payments to publishers and, more recently, YouTube stars who sign up with Brave. Ultimately, it plans to build a system in which those payments are funded by some of the ads you see. Taking a step in that direction on Wednesday, it started issuing the digital equivalent of the money it hopes will power that system.

“We’re giving people a warm welcome and putting some change in their pockets,” said company Chief Executive Brendan Eich, who previously co-founded and led the Mozilla Firefox browser.

“If we do it right, it’ll create a new ecosystem into which we transplant the viable parts of the current ecosystem — the users, the publishers and content creators, and the brands who advertise,” he said. “We’re just reconnecting them.”

Brave’s new system relies on technology called cryptocurrency. The best-known example is bitcoin, which has surged in value in recent months. But Brave relies on a newer, more sophisticated alternative, Ethereum, as a foundation for its technology, called the basic attention token, or BAT. At the current exchange rate, each BAT is worth about 21 cents.

On May 31, Brave raised $36 million in 24 seconds by selling 1 billion BATs. Brave wants these tokens to be what gets exchanged in the online ad industry. An advertiser will give them to a publisher to show an ad, for example, or in the case of the Brave itself, to people using the browser who see an ad. So far about 1,100 publishers and YouTube stars have signed up for Brave’s system, which lets them exchange BAT for dollars and other currencies through a partnership with online wallet company Uphold.

Ordinary Brave users can only spend BATs, not cash them out, but Brave hopes that’ll become more useful in the future. For example, BATs could unlock news articles behind a paywall quickly and without requiring you to think about whether you really want to pay more than $100 for an annual subscription to paywalled publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Yorker or, soon, Wired.

Cryptocurrencies are a new technology with something of a wild-west reputation still. Blockchain’s meteoric rise inspires fears of a bubble bursting when speculation cools off. The US Securities and Exchange Commission just went to court to freeze assets of a cryptocurrency company called PlexCorps it alleges is a fraud. Bitcoin is used to, among other things, fund Nazi sympathizers who’ve been kicked off mainstream online sites.

But the underpinnings of cryptocurrency, a technology called blockchain, is no scam. Blockchain promises new levels of trust and transparency for many types of transactions, and companies like Microsoft and IBM are embracing it wholeheartedly.

Brave will grant new and existing browser users digital currency that the browser can send to websites you visit.

Brave Software

Brave’s attempt to address drawbacks of today’s online ad technology — problems like privacy invasion, website performance and the injection of dangerous “malvertising” into web pages — relies on its BAT cryptocurrency. It sold 1.5 billion BATs in May, but it separately reserved 300 million for what’s called a user growth pool. Wednesday’s move distributes a tenth of a percent of them, but there will be other grants, Eich said.

Brave hopes the pool of tokens will attract new users to its browser and get existing users to set up BAT wallets within the browser, Eich said.

If you’re using Brave and opt into the BAT system, the browser automatically divvies up BAT transfers each month depending on how much time you spend at each website. You can also “pin” specific recipients so they get a fixed percentage of your contribution.

Brave also hopes the BAT bonus will encourage YouTubers to sign up — and publicize BAT and Brave. Brave by default blocks ads, so Brave users will be crimping advertising revenue distributed through YouTube’s conventional payment mechanism.

Ultimately, Brave plans to build a broader BAT network that includes other software from other companies and, eventually, standardize it as part of the web.

Correction, Dec. 6 at 5:20 p.m.: Brave created 1.5 billion tokens, but only 1 billion of them were sold on May 31.

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Ad-blocking software maker Eyeo has announced it will start allowing publishers to buy “non-intrusive ads” that will appear to users of its Adblock Plus software.

Eyeo and ad-tech company ComboTag will let publishers choose from “a marketplace of pre-whitelisted ads” that meet the criteria of its “Acceptable Ads Platform“.

The ads will be visible by users who have elected to “allow non-intrusive ads to support their favorite websites”, the company said in a press release.

“The Acceptable Ads Platform helps publishers who want to show an alternative, non-intrusive ad experience to users with ad blockers by providing them with a tool that lets them implement Acceptable Ads themselves,” said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus.

The company announced its Acceptable Ads Platform in 2011 and it says that 90 percent of its 100 million users allow respectful ads to appear on their screens.

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Feeling guilty that Brave blocks ads on websites you actually might want to support? A new version of the web browser lets you contribute money directly.

Brave 0.11.6 lets you contribute monthly to sites you visit with a feature called Brave Payments now in beta testing. About $5 a month is about enough to replace lost revenue from advertising, said Brave Chief Executive and co-founder Brendan Eich

“This is our idea for people who tell us they want to automatically micro-donate to websites, but they don’t want to do it signing up with their credit card at hundreds or thousands of sites,” Eich said. To complete the transaction, though, website publishers will have to fetch their money from an account — and some that don’t like Brave’s ad-blocking ways have said they won’t play ball with the startup.

Still, Brave’s ideas come at an opportune time. With at least 198 million people using browser plugins to block ads, web publishers are in danger of losing a key revenue source, and the public is in danger of losing free information online. Who wants news, photos, videos and other content hidden behind paywalls if you can avoid it?

Brave Payments also is a key step the company’s master plan to make publishers and readers allies, not adversaries. Publishers today often track users’ browsing behavior and their personal information so they can deliver more lucrative ads targeted toward specific populations. Brave plans to confine the ad targeting to the browser to preserve privacy — and ultimately to share some of the ad revenue directly with Brave users, too.

Brave’s financial strategy is to share 55 percent of its ad revenue with publishers — 70 percent when users don’t specifically carve off 15 percent for themselves. Brave itself will keep 15 percent and send 15 percent to ad technology business partners.

Brave Payments lets you send money toward specific websites or block them.

Brave Software

Key to this plan will be actually convincing publishers to take money from Brave’s ads.

Publishers aren’t showing much eagerness, though. In April, the Newspaper Association of America lashed out Brave’s plan to strip out publishers’ ads and drop in its own.

But Eich said he’s made headway and soon will be in New York again for more meetings with publishers. “We already peeled off some of the bigs from their hostile stance,” he said, without saying who’s come round to Brave’s view.

Eich established his browser cred by inventing the web’s JavaScript programming language in 1995 while working at browser pioneer Netscape. He also co-founded its offshoot, Mozilla, which develops the Firefox browser.

The payments system automatically generates a private list of websites, based on browsing behavior. You can specifically enable or disable contributions to those websites, Eich said. For now, Brave excludes “platform” websites that rely on ordinary people for content — Twitter and YouTube, for example — until the company can work out a way to send some of its ad revenue to who tweet and post videos, too.

Brave Payments is an anonymous system so Brave and website publishers don’t know who’s actually donating the money. It uses the Bitcoin digital currency to power the money transfer so it’s clear Brave isn’t up to any payment shenanigans.

“It’s a public decentralized ledger so it can be audited. People can verify we’re not skimming,” Eich said. “That auditing is very important to us. There’s a lot of nontransparency or fraud in the ad-tech business.”

Bitcoin enables low-friction payments, but there can be friction convincing people to use it. To try to smooth the path, Brave has partnerships with BitGo to holding bitcoin funds in electronic wallets; Coinbase so people can buy bitcoins from within Brave; and Private Internet Access to keep people’s IP (Internet Protocol) addresses out of Brave’s own logs.

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Ads or not, streaming music appears to be on a path to serious growth, Juniper Research data shows.
Lexy Savvides/CNET

Apple Music’s subscription-based music-streaming offering won’t prove to be much of a detriment to ad-supported music listening, new data from Juniper Research shows.

Revenue generated from ad-based music streaming is expected to hit $782 million worldwide this year, and jump to more than $1 billion in 2016, the research firm said Tuesday. Still, these services — sometimes called “freemium” because they are free to use but make money on advertising — could ultimately boost the number of users who eventually opt for subscription-based services.

“The new research found that while freemium services will continue to entice a growing number of users, the model will enjoy a greater influence in funneling consumers towards the more profitable subscription options,” according to a statement from Juniper Research.

The research is undoubtedly heartening to companies that operate ad-based subscription services. After Apple announced its subscription-based Apple Music in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference, many have argued that the business model will ultimately guide the streaming business. While Juniper generally agrees with the sentiment, its data suggests ad-based music listening is far from dead.

The music-streaming business is generally broken into two categories: ad-based and subscription-based. Ad-based models, or freemium, provide users the opportunity to stream tracks, but every few songs, they must listen to audio ads. Subscription-based services, meanwhile, remove all ads in favor of monthly fees for access to music libraries. Unlike most freemium services that limit the number of songs that can be skipped, most subscription-based offerings do not limit song skips.

Several companies operate on both sides of the streaming space. Pandora, for instance, has a freemium model, as well as a $5-a-month subscription-based option. Spotify has a free, ad-supported offering alongside its $10 subscription service. Tidal, backed by artist Jay Z, and Apple Music offer subscription-based services that start at $10 per month. Apple Music, however, also allows for free access to the company’s Beats 1 radio station without paying the monthly fee.

Whatever the method users choose, what is abundantly clear is that streaming music is here to stay. In March, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported that for the first time, streaming-music revenue outstripped CD sales. The organization reported that in 2014, streaming-music revenue in the US reached $1.87 billion, just topping the $1.85 billion generated off CD sales.

Meanwhile, music downloads, the music purchases that typify Apple’s iTunes store, are starting to erode. RIAA reported that music download revenue in the US hit $2.6 billion in 2014, down 8.7 percent compared to the same period in 2013.

Like Juniper’s data, RIAA’s report showed a strong ad-supported music-streaming industry, as revenue soared 34 percent to $295 million. Paid subscription services were up 25 percent to $799 million last year.

Looking ahead, subscription revenue is expected to soar, Juniper said. The company said Apple Music will “act as a major catalyst in driving the expansion of subscription-based streaming services.” The research firm noted that the increasing popularity of subscription streaming will ultimately contribute to a “global decline” in download revenue. The company expects streaming revenue to overtake download revenue in 2018, marking the next major shift in how listeners consume music.

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