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Ari Paparo
Welcome to Marketecture. I'm Ari Paparo. I'm here joined by JP Schmetz, who is the chief of ads for Brave, the browser. I'm pretty excited about this conversation because I want to learn a bit about what Brave is up to. So jp, thank you for being here.
JP Schmetz
Thanks for having me on.
Ari Paparo
Thank you. So what is Brave nowadays?
JP Schmetz
Well, Brave is a Browser used by 80 million plus people every month. More than 35 million, I think, every day. We publish the stats on Twitter every month. It's also a search engine which I founded in 2008. So a long time before Brave was founded and it was acquired By Brave In 2021, this search engine has become quite a thing. So we serve 40 million queries every day, mostly obviously to Brave users. It's kind of bundled into the browser, but it's also used by LLMs via search API. So all in all, we serve way above 100 million queries per day in the meantime. So it's not a small thing, it's a very, very large thing.
Ari Paparo
So when you say LLMs, does that mean when I'm using, let's say perplexity and it doesn't have a good answer, it reaches out to your search engine.
JP Schmetz
Yeah, the LLMs are becoming more and more smart about the strategy of how to answer a question. And if their chain of thought basically says maybe I should look it up on the Internet, then that's typically what they would do, is to call a Brave Search API, get the answers and then have more up to date information. Let's say, oh, or citations.
Ari Paparo
Let's talk quickly about Brave, the company, because I think probably everyone's heard of it, but it's sort of shrouded in mystery a little bit because it has something to do with crypto and it raised a lot of money and people aren't really sure what's going on Is it a for profit company? How big is it? Where is it based?
JP Schmetz
Yes, it is a for profit company. Was founded by Brendan Eich, who is the inventor of JavaScript, the chief architect, I believe, of Netscape and CTO, and at one point CEO of Firefox or Mozilla, which basically makes it a long, continuous, let's say, development of a browser since the beginnings.
Ari Paparo
Yeah, right.
JP Schmetz
And you know, when you start a browser, in order to differentiate yourself, you have to think a little bit about what, what you care about, etc. And I think the, the differentiation factors of Brave are basically privacy first, meaning that we do block a lot of crackers and, and, and ads, which a lot of your listeners will be aggravated by it because we block a lot of the ad text.
Ari Paparo
You do block a lot of stuff. I've used the Brave browser.
JP Schmetz
And the second thing that we relatively quickly embraced was Crypto because a lot of our users are basically fascinated by it. And we felt that Web3, whatever it is, because this is an evolving concept, is going to happen in Brave or is happening in Brave. So that can be wallet, NFTs or whatnot and tokens of different source. And then it is search definitely. Meaning that we, unlike other browsers like Firefox or Opera, etc. We have embraced the idea that search is an intimate part of the browser.
Ari Paparo
Okay, great.
JP Schmetz
It's like the car needs a steering wheel and the steering wheel is the search engine and we haven't outsourced ours to Google.
Ari Paparo
Well, yeah, I think you're going to. If you say too much on that subject, you might be subpoenaed by the Department of Justice in the Google case about the browser being part of search.
JP Schmetz
But I have been there. I haven't been subpoenaed, but I have been at the Department of Justice to.
Ari Paparo
Yeah, okay. So for those of us who don't use Brave, I want to hear what's the ad experience like in the browser and then what's the search experience like in the browser?
JP Schmetz
So the search experience is very much as you would expect. You type something in the navigation bar and you will have a search result page popping up from Brave.
Ari Paparo
Right.
JP Schmetz
One thing to notice is we are probably one of the largest use case of AI because 1/3 of our queries are answered by AI summarization on top, which is very important.
Ari Paparo
That's a high percentage. One third.
JP Schmetz
Yeah. If you haven't tried it, please do, because you won't see this really anywhere because Google doesn't dare to do it as much as we do for whatever reason and we have been doing it for a long, long time, which means we have learned quite a bit. So that I think is the differentiation is really this really incredible summarizer AI on top of the results. Otherwise our results are really good. So you will probably not miss Google. At least I don't miss it and most of the users don't miss it at all. Otherwise the browser is fast because it's pretty obvious. But if you download 50% of the trackers on the page, things go fast.
Ari Paparo
Let me interrupt for one second. So on the web page, are you running an acceptable ads program or are all ads blocked?
JP Schmetz
Well, no. So first party ads are never blocked. So we do respect the fact that if people want to monetize and they do this without breaching the privacy of the user, this is totally acceptable.
Ari Paparo
What is a first party ad like people just putting an image in their HTML?
JP Schmetz
No, no, very good question. First party ad simply means that it is served from the same domain as the domain that you are on. So if you go to CNN.com if the ads come from CNN come, it will not be blocked. But if it comes from Google it will be blocked. If it has 17 trackers from 17 different ad tech companies, it will be blocked because.
Ari Paparo
But realistically nobody does that, right? I mean like who's serving ads from their own domain?
JP Schmetz
No, no, lots of people do.
Ari Paparo
Are you talking about like native ads? Like if I go to Reddit, the ads are from Reddit's ad server, so.
JP Schmetz
That'S okay, I see where you're coming from. So in search you would be surprised how many, I mean a lot of the big companies do not want to be spied on by Google either.
Ari Paparo
Right.
JP Schmetz
So if you talk to the biggest advertiser in the world, like Amazon Booking, indeed, there is nothing to block from them. Right. All of the tracking is basically built, maybe not built by them, but at least operated by them because they don't like other companies to spy on them. Media has been, and my previous job was leading a very big media company in Europe. Media has been perverted at one point to just basically give up and ask someone else to do the work.
Ari Paparo
Right, right, right.
JP Schmetz
Which is understandable up to a point, but it has a side effect for the user and the side effect is that your browsing history becomes basically available.
Ari Paparo
Right, right. So what I would call native ads. So Amazon ads on Amazon. Indeed, ads on. Indeed. Reddit Ads on Reddit are allowed, but ad tags on most media sites are not allowed because they're Part of the ecosystem of what I would call the ad tech ecosystem.
JP Schmetz
Okay, yeah, programmatic in general. As soon as it involves another domain name, most users are not technical enough to see what's going on behind the web page. And interestingly enough, if you are technical enough, you just don't want it. People who see it, so people will see it, don't want it. Well, I run another company called Ghost 3 and most of our users are in the ad tech industry that.
Ari Paparo
Okay, so on search, is your search engine the default or is it the only option? It's the default.
JP Schmetz
It's the default, but not the only option. I mean anyone, if you want to use Brave with Google, as many people do, you can obviously.
Ari Paparo
Right, okay, so now what's the opportunity for advertisers here?
JP Schmetz
Well, for search. So if you do search advertising in Google, this is incremental, right? Because all users, we use Google search, we use Brave search, do not use Google almost by definition especially. And we provide a very good value essentially because the conversion rate is going to be very similar. The conversion value will be similar, the price will be possibly a little bit lower, and it's just incremental. Right. So now for a company like Amazon or Booking or indeed our biggest clients, this is very sizable. Because even if you just grow something by 1% and it's in a billion, that's going to be very worth someone's time. If you get 50 clicks a day from Google, yeah, we're going to give you half a click. Right. So that may be a little bit different.
Ari Paparo
I'd like to see half a click.
JP Schmetz
I wonder if that would convert statistically you'll get half a click. But we do actually very much minimize the work that advertisers need to do to advertise on us. Like it's actually just a one click setup.
Ari Paparo
How is it a one click setup? How does that work?
JP Schmetz
Well, we know the web, right? So the fact that we are able to build a search engine and an advertising system for search is really a search engine for ads. We just decided to simply index the ads as well. So we know exactly what people do.
Ari Paparo
Okay, so you're importing from Google Ads in some way.
JP Schmetz
We don't import from the accounts, of course, we don't have access to the accounts and that wouldn't work. But we do know from crawling the web, including crawling Google, that what people actually do and what page exists and we have a system, for example, where we can, if you show up in organic results at any level, we can duplicate that and create an ad out of it. Which actually has proven to be quite a success for most big advertisers because they get basically millions of ads. That's possible. That's usually 15 to 16% CTR and very high conversion and zero setup like human telescope.
Ari Paparo
Do the major search advertising providers, I forget what they call it, Search marketing partners work with you. The Kenchus Marins?
JP Schmetz
No, not agencies. I mean paradoxically, the fact that it's a zero work setup does not work.
Ari Paparo
No, that doesn't appeal to agencies. Right.
JP Schmetz
So I think at one point it's this will happen. But at the moment I would say nearly 100% of all relationships are direct.
Ari Paparo
Right. Okay. So I was asking more about APIs. If I'm using a third party to manage my Google and maybe my Bing campaigns, will they automatically work with you or do you not have resale partners?
JP Schmetz
We do not have resale partners at this time.
Ari Paparo
Got it.
JP Schmetz
So it'd be very interesting if a big customer enough wants to use them to advertise on us. We will certainly try to integrate. But at the moment it's not on the telemetry side. So on the attribution side, I mean we have techniques, let's say that can make Google SA360 work, for example, even though we, you know, if it's used in third party, it will not work. But most bigger customers use it as a first party implementation which is recommended by Google at this point.
Ari Paparo
Right, right, that makes sense. And do your search results only appear in the browser or do you also do any search results indication?
JP Schmetz
Well, so obviously anyone can use Brave search anywhere on the web and then people can buy access to the API, which means that they would be able to create their own search engine. And I think a few do, but most of, I mean 90 plus percent of our traffic comes from LLMs, not from.
Ari Paparo
And do the ads appear in those results?
JP Schmetz
No.
Ari Paparo
Okay, so I was asking from the advertiser's perspective. So it's clear if you're an advertiser on your search, you're only appearing in the Brave search results.
JP Schmetz
Yes, yes, at the moment, yes. That may change in Europe at one point, but not at this point. Plus it's a very tricky thing to do. Right, because you have to be very careful that the CPCs are similarly valuable across all your partner network and that makes it a much, much, much more complicated setup. And also not incremental. Right. Because you can not incremental. So if, to take an example, if Dr. Go away, Kozia would switch from Bing to Brave, it would not provide incremental value to the customers because they're just getting it from a different place. Right.
Ari Paparo
It doesn't create new clicks and the audience. So can you characterize the Brave audience? What percent market share does Brave have in the browser market? And is it geographically more Europe or us or what?
JP Schmetz
Yeah, at this point, basically geographically, you can assume pretty much 1/3 US, 1/3 Europe, 1/3 the rest of the world, that kind of thing. So at this level, it becomes very difficult to be biased in terms of types of users. Well, they have chosen Brave, right? So we have the users that have not settled for the default. So you can assume that they are definitely more able to take their own decisions about the tools that they use. So for marketers, they're definitely interesting. So if you want to, we have another product called the new Tab Takeover, which is kind of a billboard format, takes over the whole day of the browser. We recommend we sell that actively to brands that want to target the. Basically the people that are not afraid to take a decision that's not the majority.
Ari Paparo
Right. The kind of people who would install a browser and know how to use it, which is probably 10, 20% of the population.
JP Schmetz
Switch away from the defaults, right? Like the defaults work pretty well. So it's not like you don't have something on your phone when you buy it. You have Safari or you have Chrome, but these people go the extra bit and say, well, now I'm just going to use Brave and take control. So if you're a marketer and you have a product and you want people to switch from whatever is the main product in your category. I think our audience is pretty good, right? Because they have shown that they have that. That thing in there. In there, that gene that tells them don't do what 99% of the other people do.
Ari Paparo
So I was just about to ask you about other formats and you mentioned one. So what other formats besides search results are available from Brave?
JP Schmetz
So basically, search is by the biggest and also has the biggest potential for us. And then we have this new Tab Takeover, which is basically you book a gigantic picture because in desktop it's obviously the full screen, right? Per day and then per country, most likely. So that's the second biggest.
Ari Paparo
And wait, how does it work? So I open a new tab and it's just the default image is that.
JP Schmetz
Yes.
Ari Paparo
And then I type in something, it goes away, right? Yeah, of course.
JP Schmetz
As soon as you navigate away, it goes away. So you can have two types of experience. Either you Will have a pretty picture on days where we either don't have ads or on I think 3 4th of the new tabs that you open will never have an ad anyway.
Ari Paparo
I see.
JP Schmetz
And then if we have an ad, you will see usually a very beautiful picture. Right. It's not an obnoxious ad, but it's a very beautiful picture.
Ari Paparo
What type of advert do you list any advertisers who've done this recently?
JP Schmetz
Yes. So we have a lot of gaming companies so youft that sort of stuff. So we had a huge campaign with Star wars in the fall last year when they launched the Star wars thing we had. Toyota has done many, many new tab takeovers in the last few months.
Ari Paparo
Is that CPM priced or flat priced?
JP Schmetz
CPD basically cost per day.
Ari Paparo
Yeah.
JP Schmetz
So flat. Which basically is a flat cpm. It's not a performance format because when booking did a new tab takeover, it's not like you see a picture of a swimming pool and you go, oh shit, I need a holiday, I'll book right away. Right. That's not how it works. But what happens then is we definitely see that the search ads perform better because people say, yeah, that brand I know because that's what I see sometimes in the news takeover. And second is we see more surges. So Toyota definitely sees more searches for the electric vehicle that they advertise on the days where they advertise it. Same for Ubisoft and Star Wars TurboTax.
Ari Paparo
I have to ask the question, even though I already know the answer. I assume you can't ad serve this unit.
JP Schmetz
No. So we serve it ourselves. Yeah, you serve it. It's actually pre delivered to the browser because we never want advertisement to slow down the experience. So it is actually in your browser before you see it. And in 1st of April. I believe it sounds April Fool's work, but it's not. It's just the release date of the browser version. We're going to allow advertisers to do rich HTML, which basically means you can put interaction into the ad itself. I mean we'll obviously be conservative about it, but technically you can just have the whole game play in your browser if you're a gaming company.
Ari Paparo
Right, right. That's great. So any other formats available besides those?
JP Schmetz
Yes, we have two smaller formats which are a bit more tricky. One is called push, which is basically for very small. Well, for a subset of users, I would say 10% of all users opt in to get push ads. So you can book that and then we have an even smaller product called ads in the news feed that we have. So we have in the browser homepage, you can scroll down and see basically a newsfeed. And there are some ads there, but these are much smaller than the other two.
Ari Paparo
All right, so last topic, a lot of folks associate Brave with like crypto and the ICO that funded the company, the token. And then there's like sharing to publishers based on traffic. Is that all still present? I know it seems like it's been really diminished in the way Brave talks about itself. And is anyone getting payments from this token, you know, as consumers surf the web?
JP Schmetz
Yes and yes. But there's sort of two levels of opt in, right? So first of all, you have to opt in the rewards program, which not everyone does. It's one of these things that you also know from coupon companies, et cetera. It's not because it's there and it gives you a benefit that people opt in for it. So only I think 10% of the people actually opt in rewards.
Ari Paparo
These are consumers. 10% of consumers opt in consumer.
JP Schmetz
And then you have, since more recently, a whole KYC process. Because if you pay money to people, especially crypto, the regulators have basically said, well, you got to show that you are clean, you're not money laundering, et cetera, which gives us another 90% decrease in number of people that go through that process. And so that's the reason why, like you said, it's diminished. It's diminished because it is in fact much, much, much, much more difficult than people think.
Ari Paparo
If I'm a publisher, let's say I run a blog site, can I opt in to start getting paid every time people who've opted in visit my site?
JP Schmetz
Well, you can, but then people have to donate to you in some form, right? So the people who collect money can decide to keep the money for themselves or to give it to you.
Ari Paparo
Okay.
JP Schmetz
You know, you know what I'm saying?
Ari Paparo
All right, sounds complicated.
Adelaide
Okay, let's.
JP Schmetz
It does. I mean, there were some significant amount of money that we're going to blocks, but it's the usual suspects, right? So Mr. Beast will get you more than you. Unfortunately, that's the way it automatically works. But it is much more difficult than you would think to share money with users these days, especially with crypto. Regulation has not been friendly.
Ari Paparo
All right, let's do a quick lightning round. So relatively quick questions, quick answers. So what is your biggest challenge?
JP Schmetz
The biggest challenge. So basically you mentioned it earlier with the doj, right? We face a massive competitor who is known or has been actually found to be abusing its monopoly powers. So this is our biggest. We grow very fast but I believe we would grow infinitely faster if there wasn't all of this difficulty with Google setting the defaults and not allowing basically their partners like Apple to even have Brave in the dropdown list where you can choose search. So that I would say is a major problem because once people start using Brave they stick around. Once people start using Brave search they stick around even more. So we don't have a product problem at all.
Ari Paparo
Right, Right. Distribution is their problem.
JP Schmetz
Distribution has been monopolized and found to be. So it's not like we are claiming it's monopolized. Is the courts have claimed it's monopolized?
Ari Paparo
No, they found it. It's not even a claim anymore.
JP Schmetz
So the question is the remedy. The remedy situation which we will know I guess sometimes this year.
Ari Paparo
Yeah. What's your biggest challenge when it comes to attracting advertisers to search?
JP Schmetz
Basically just getting a meeting. I think that once we have.
Ari Paparo
You've heard it here. If you want to meet with J.P. just hit him on LinkedIn.
JP Schmetz
Yes. So we have a target list of about per country of something like 150 to 200 customers because we obviously target the biggest because they will see the most benefit, right?
Ari Paparo
Yeah. Right.
JP Schmetz
But once we have the meeting they are immediately convinced. So there's never someone who says no, I'm not interested. But then we go through these sometimes fairly intricate vendor approval systems. Right. Because it's not easy to become a new vendor of a major corporation these days. And then we go live with a trial. So we give them depending on the industry because some industries we are already making tons of money so we don't want to give too long of a trials but we can give you trials for a few weeks until you are comfortable about the price that you're willing to pay for the clicks and then you're basically live at that point. And that almost never fails. Meaning that once we have a chance to make the argument for half an hour it's a no brainer because there's no risk. Right.
Ari Paparo
It seems like it's obvious if you spend a certain amount on Google search it makes sense to.
JP Schmetz
Yeah. If you don't make sense, is there.
Ari Paparo
Some minimum, is there like a guideline like X dollars per month on search means you should try it.
JP Schmetz
There's none. But you should try to think of it this way. Like if you say, like if someone would come to you and say you can get 1, 2% more traffic, is this Something where you say, oh, yeah, sure, great. Like it's 1% is a lot. Or do you say.
Ari Paparo
Right, well, it depends on the overhead. It depends on the overhead.
JP Schmetz
Right, exactly. So we keep it low. But still sometimes, like I said before, if you get 50 clicks a day from Google, you're not going to be happy with Brave because you're going to get one click every two days. Right, got it. But if you are a very, very active advertiser on Google, I can promise you, you will be happy. Absolutely.
Ari Paparo
All right, last question. If Brave was an animal, what animal would it be?
JP Schmetz
Well, it's a lion.
Ari Paparo
It's a lion.
JP Schmetz
That's the logo.
Ari Paparo
That is. Good answer. It's a good answer. A lot of people say lion.
JP Schmetz
I was like, oh, watch it. Oh, of course it's a lion. We are a lion. That's what. That's what the logo is.
Ari Paparo
A lion. I got it. A lot of people say lion, but you have. You back it up with your logo.
JP Schmetz
Exactly. I didn't decide it just right now. Yeah.
Ari Paparo
All right, well, jp, thank you so much for being here and big on marketecture.
JP Schmetz
Thanks. Looks great.
Ari Paparo
Thank you for listening to the marketecture podcast. New episodes come out every Friday and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at marketecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's news at News Market tv. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join at adtechgod.
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Marketecture Podcast Summary
Episode: Brave: The Independent Browser and Search Engine
Release Date: February 24, 2025
Host: Ari Paparo
Guest: JP Schmetz, Chief of Ads for Brave
In this episode of the Marketecture Podcast, host Ari Paparo engages in an insightful discussion with JP Schmetz, the Chief of Ads for Brave—a privacy-focused browser and search engine. The conversation delves into Brave's unique positioning in the browser market, its advertising ecosystem, search capabilities, and the challenges it faces in competing with industry giants like Google.
Brave's User Base and Reach
JP Schmetz opens by highlighting Brave's substantial user base: “Brave is a Browser used by 80 million plus people every month. More than 35 million, I think, every day” (01:12). He emphasizes that Brave Search, founded in 2008 and acquired by Brave in 2021, processes over 100 million queries daily, positioning it as a significant player in the search engine landscape.
Privacy-First and Crypto Integration
Schmetz outlines Brave's core differentiators:
Ad Blocking and First-Party Ads
A significant portion of Brave’s appeal lies in its ad-blocking capabilities. Schmetz clarifies:
Ad Formats and Innovations
Brave offers various ad formats tailored to maintain a seamless user experience:
Integration with Advertising Systems
Brave simplifies the advertising process: “We know exactly what people do... we can duplicate that and create an ad out of it” (10:14). This allows for a streamlined, one-click setup for advertisers, minimizing the effort required to launch campaigns on Brave.
Enhanced Search with AI Summarization
Brave Search stands out by incorporating AI to summarize search results: “We are probably one of the largest use case of AI because 1/3 of our queries are answered by AI summarization on top” (04:57). This feature not only improves the relevancy of results but also offers a distinct advantage over competitors like Google.
Default Search Engine and API Usage
Brave Search is the default within the Brave browser, although users can opt for alternatives like Google. Additionally, Brave offers an API, allowing Large Language Models (LLMs) to utilize Brave Search for up-to-date information and citations, thus extending its reach beyond the browser itself.
Opt-In Rewards and Regulatory Challenges
Despite being a notable aspect of Brave’s identity, the crypto-based rewards program faces limitations:
Publisher Payments
For publishers, Brave allows opting into the rewards system, but it requires user donations, which can be unpredictable and often skewed towards high-profile content creators. Schmetz remarks, “All right, sounds complicated” (20:50), acknowledging the complexities involved.
Monopolization by Google
One of Brave's primary challenges is the monopolistic control exerted by Google over search defaults. Schmetz explains, “We face a massive competitor who is known or has been actually found to be abusing its monopoly powers” (21:40). This limits Brave’s ability to gain more market share, as platforms like Apple don’t currently prioritize Brave in their search dropdown options.
Attracting Advertisers
Despite creating compelling advertising products, Brave struggles to engage advertising agencies, which prefer established platforms. “Nearly 100% of all relationships are direct” (11:21), indicating Brave’s reliance on direct advertiser partnerships rather than agency intermediaries.
In a rapid-fire segment, JP Schmetz shares personal insights:
The episode wraps up with Schmetz expressing confidence in Brave's offerings and potential once distribution barriers are addressed. Ari Paparo encourages listeners to consider Brave as a viable alternative in both browsing and advertising, highlighting the browser’s commitment to privacy and innovative ad solutions.
Notable Quote:
“Once people start using Brave they stick around. Once people start using Brave search they stick around even more. So we don't have a product problem at all.” – JP Schmetz (22:36)
For those interested in exploring Brave further, visit Brave's website or listen to more episodes of the Marketecture Podcast at marketecture.tv.
Note: This summary excludes non-content sections such as advertisements, intros, and outros to focus solely on the valuable insights shared during the episode.