Not trying to hate on BAT, but I dont think I understand it.
Doesn't the whole idea hinge on people being willing to watch ads for coins, instead of just disabling them with an ad-blocker? I think that might be rather unlikely. There are already websites where people can watch ads for money, but none of them seem to have gained much traction.
I dont see the coins earned being enough to recoup the "$23 of every cell phone bill going towards the bandwidth for ads". How does BAT reduce this if its about showing people ads?
Does the brave browser / chrome extension disable the current style of ads? How does it help make them more secure? Wouldnt any way to do that involve getting all the ads to use BAT for marketing?
That seems rather ambitious and I dont see many big marketers being willing to take the plunge into a using a (currently) obscure product like BAT rather than sticking with a long proven product like google adsense.
The idea is that if there's a better browsing experience and a better way for advertisers to target and measure their audience then consumers and advertisers would be willing to switch to a different product. They don't expect users to make big profits from earning tokens, but rather put it back into publishers they like.
You're right though it may never pan out. My investment in BAT is a small speculation.