Rob Leathern
medium.com/@robleathern · Personal blog · on HN since 2015
Rob Leathern, a Brave executive and ad industry veteran, writes about mobile advertising, ad blocking, and the economics of online ads.
What HN saysHN commenters, including the author, cite his posts on carrier data costs, ad blocking, and how developers rarely click ads when discussing Brave.
22HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
26stories submitted
366story points
8 years agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Mobile Video Ad Lie5 people · 10 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 2Carriers Are Making More from Mobile Ads Than Publishers Are4 people · 74 points · first shared 2015 · 30 comments on HN
- 3The Subprime Ad Crisis Is Here3 people · 23 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 4People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads2 people · 127 points · first shared 2016 · 115 comments on HN
- 5Startup Exit Stories You Didn’t Read About2 people · 9 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Artificial Intelligence Will Make Advertising Obsolete2 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Block ads on home devices using a Raspberry Pi1 people · 81 points · first shared 2015 · 24 comments on HN
- 8Why are we still putting up with scam ads and fake news stories?1 people · 9 points · first shared 2015 · 5 comments on HN
- 9Who is the average Donald Trump supporter? (per Facebook data)1 people · 8 points · first shared 2015 · 4 comments on HN
- 10What's wrong with conferences and how to fix them1 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Do ad blockers use more browser memory?1 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 12Ads account for 53% of a mobile data plan in the US1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13Your Mobile Carrier Is Lying to You1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 14The startup ego bubble1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 15How to Block Ads Responsibly1 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
BrendanEich · 2017-06-12
The BAT is for more apps, Brave is just first.
Do your parents like paying half their data plan ($23/month in the US) to load tracking scripts and ads? See https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-from-mobile-a… Brave is 3-7x faster on top news/media sites than Chrome on Android.
All this and more is discussed at https://basicattentiontoken.org/.
How do small faster browsers get big? Marketing. To counter, big browsers have to block by default and none will (Apple comes closest and is our best ally). They're all beholden.
optimalrob · 2016-07-30
We will not - we intend to keep this service free. We hope that some portion of people sign up for our publisher tips, to reward journalists for great content. We take a percentage of they but just as I have publicly said most publishers should NOT block ad blocking users but it's up to them, we hope to provide an optional mechanism for people to pay. Longer term we think a lot of advertising is transformed by software. I wrote about this here - https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will-make-adve…
jonathansampson · 2018-10-06
As others have pointed out, Brave is much faster largely due to us blocking third party ads and trackers. These can account for more than 50% of your data at times. As a result, blocking them will result in better performance.
See https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-from-mobile-a… and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-of-mobile… for more information.
xU1ppskunDmy6oz · 2017-07-18
Nothing is keeping them from doing it. They (and others, e.g. the Brave browser and Optimal) have been doing that for a while. Here are a few related links:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-…
http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/google-relaunches-contributor-…
https://blog.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/
https://medium.com/@robleathern/why-we-sold-optimals-technology-to-sov…
bduerst · 2016-05-04
Most engineers and software developers don't click on ads or use advertising mediums [1]. Other user segments are less bothered by them.
https://medium.com/@robleathern/people-in-silicon-valley-don-t-click-o…
thesteamboat · 2015-11-01
I think this link was posted here a little while ago:
https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-from-mobile-a…
The article is exactly what it says on the tin: You are charged more (roughly 16x) for the data inherent in the ad than the publisher makes for serving it.
In an ideal world with perfect coordination, we'd agree to just directly send the publisher a quarter of what the current ad data costs us, and everybody relevant wins.