Courageous, the privacy-focused browser that constructed its status on blocking on-line commercials, has grown to 109 million month-to-month lively customers as of February 2026 – up from 80 million in January 2025. The milestone arrives alongside renewed scrutiny of a enterprise mannequin that concurrently strips writer income and generates its personal promoting earnings.

The trajectory didn’t occur accidentally. In a Q&A printed by AdExchanger on March 24, 2026, Jean-Paul Schmetz, Courageous’s Chief of Adverts and CEO of Ghostery, laid out the philosophy behind an organization that critics describe as parasitic and supporters body as a needed correction to surveillance-based promoting. The interview, which surfaced extensively in advertising circles by a LinkedIn post by Dustin Cha, Co-CEO of Advert-Protect, reignited a dialog that the digital promoting business has been reluctant to have in full.

From open-source browser to advert platform

Courageous launched in 2016 as an open-source, ad-blocking, privacy-forward net browser, positioned explicitly as a challenger to Google’s Chrome. Three years later, in 2019, shortly after exiting beta, the corporate started introducing what it described as opt-in, rewarded advert experiences. Customers who selected to take part may earn Fundamental Consideration Tokens (BAT), a cryptocurrency, in alternate for viewing commercials. These tokens may then be transferred out of the Courageous Rewards pockets and transformed to different digital belongings or fiat currencies. Courageous Adverts operated with a 70 % income share to customers.

The scope expanded in 2021, when Brave acquired the search platform Tailcat, previously referred to as Cliqz, a European firm. That acquisition gave Courageous the know-how to construct an unbiased search engine – and with it, a search promoting product. Schmetz was concerned in constructing the Tailcat know-how that now underpins Courageous Search, making him a central determine within the platform’s promoting structure.

Since then, Courageous has added additional advert models. In line with the AdExchanger report from March 24, 2026, the corporate launched takeover show adverts that seem when customers open new tabs, plus restricted pop-up notifications. Brave Search Ads officially exited beta on May 30, 2024, following an 18-month testing section with manufacturers together with Amazon, Dell, and Shutterstock. At that time, Courageous reported greater than 10 billion annual queries and famous {that a} third of the highest US search advertisers by media spend have been already testing or working campaigns on the platform. By September 2025, Brave reached 100 million monthly users, with the search engine rising to just about 20 billion queries per yr.

How the concentrating on works – or quite, the way it does not

The technical method to advert concentrating on units Courageous aside from the programmatic infrastructure that dominates digital promoting. Schmetz was specific concerning the distinction within the AdExchanger Q&A. “It is not programmatic,” he mentioned of Courageous’s technique. “It is not attempting to determine that you just have been gloves on Amazon 10 minutes in the past, so I am going to offer you an advert for gloves.”

For search promoting, the system makes use of solely the question itself and the consumer’s nation. No demographic inference, no behavioral alerts, no third-party knowledge. In line with Schmetz: “Should you kind ‘purchase lipstick,’ I do not care if you happen to’re a person or girl, I am going to offer you a lipstick advert.” For brand spanking new tab takeover show adverts, the one concentrating on dimension is nation. Courageous by no means makes use of third-party cookies. It doesn’t observe any advert IDs. The browser can, nevertheless, retailer advert publicity knowledge domestically – that means it could decide whether or not a consumer clicked a search advert after which visited a conversion web page inside 30 days, by an encrypted sync characteristic. That knowledge, in line with Schmetz, just isn’t accessible by Courageous itself.

This mannequin stands in sharp distinction to the programmatic infrastructure that has come under sustained antitrust pressure. US District Choose Amit Mehta dominated in August 2024 that Google illegally maintained monopolies usually search providers and search textual content promoting. A separate Virginia court docket present in April 2025 that Google monopolized writer advert server and advert alternate markets.

The writer drawback that the business avoids

The enterprise mannequin comprises a pressure that Cha, writing on LinkedIn, articulated plainly. Courageous blocks publisher ads to draw customers. Then it serves its personal adverts to generate income for itself. A few of these adverts seem as pop-ups whereas customers browse writer web sites – web sites that, concurrently, can not attain these customers by typical promoting.

The size of this phenomenon just isn’t trivial. Cha cited figures suggesting that over 1 billion customers now browse the online with aggressive adblocking lively. Analysis printed in August 2025 by Advert-Protect, detailed on PPC Land, documented what researchers termed “darkish visitors” – net visits that evade measurement instruments and block commercials completely. In line with that analysis, primarily based on evaluation of over 5 billion web page views, practically 976 million web customers generated darkish visitors as of 2025, with projections pointing towards 1.1 billion by 2026. Analytics blocking affected 62 % of these web page views.

The Advert-Protect analysis drew a distinction between “grey visitors,” which allows primary measurement and whitelisted adverts, and “darkish visitors,” which blocks all the pieces – analytics, cookie consent banners, subscription prompts, and paywalls. Darkish visitors comprised 79 % of adblocking situations. Cha framed it as an 18 % income minimize throughout the open net – a determine that lands in another way when publishers are already navigating declining natural search visitors from AI-generated summaries.

Cha famous that analytics scripts are additionally blocked by these instruments, creating what he known as “darkish visitors” – visits that go undetected completely. The enterprise mannequin raises questions on precedent. Vishveshwar Jatain, responding to Cha’s LinkedIn submit, famous that browser toolbars have been demonetized for comparable conduct in a previous period, and questioned why publishers had not pursued authorized motion. Cha responded by pointing to Courageous’s promotional language round notification adverts – described on the Courageous web site as “adverts delivered by way of push notifications because the consumer browses the online” – and described it as “essentially the most overtly parasitic monetization mannequin on the fashionable web.”

What Schmetz says about competitors and Google

Schmetz addressed the Google antitrust proceedings straight within the AdExchanger Q&A. He expressed no optimism that Google can be required to divest Chrome. “By no means,” he mentioned, when requested whether or not a Chrome divestiture was believable. His reasoning was structural: a browser with no search engine or a search deal has no viable monetization path.

His proposed treatment was extra particular. In line with the interview, Schmetz beneficial to the Division of Justice that Google be required to pay any browser that brings visitors to Google Search – no matter whether or not a licensing deal is in place. Below that mannequin, Courageous customers who use Google Search would generate income for Courageous. “Why ought to Firefox get $400 million a yr from Google and we get nothing?” he mentioned. Choose Mehta’s September 2025 ruling, which rejected Chrome divestiture while imposing behavioral restrictions, stopped in need of the traffic-sharing treatment Schmetz had advocated. DuckDuckGo’s CEO also criticized the identical ruling as inadequate to revive aggressive circumstances.

On the query of mandated knowledge sharing with opponents – one other treatment included within the ruling – Schmetz famous that Google had requested the choose to remain the requirement pending attraction. Google filed an appeal in January 2026 seeking to pause that data-sharing mandate. The method, Schmetz indicated, will take appreciable time.

AI search and the search engine optimisation flywheel that not turns

Schmetz provided a sober evaluation of what AI has carried out to natural search visitors. “The flywheel we have had for the final 20 years has been mainly dismantled, whether or not by AI or different issues,” he mentioned. At Courageous, the sample mirrors Google – search engine optimisation, he famous, “works at Courageous the identical method it really works at Google – as in, I’d say, much less and fewer.”

For publishers, he framed the core drawback clearly: if the abstract of content material is nearly as good because the content material itself, the worth of visiting the unique supply diminishes. He pointed to video, podcasts, and authentic content material as codecs that require direct expertise – and subsequently stay defensible towards AI summarization. The statement aligns with patterns documented extensively in the context of Google’s AI Overviews, which the Unbiased Publishers Alliance formally complained about to the European Fee in June 2025, citing visitors declines exceeding 34.5 % when AI summaries seem.

Search promoting, Schmetz famous, has by no means been a viable path for publishers as a income supply in reverse – that means publishers shopping for search adverts to accumulate guests. The economics merely don’t work: paying roughly $1 per click on to monetize at a $5 CPM produces a structural loss. Publishers have traditionally relied on search engine optimisation, a route that AI-generated solutions are steadily narrowing.

The OpenAI promoting query

Schmetz was additionally requested about OpenAI introducing commercials. He known as the logic sound. If customers specific industrial intent of their queries, natural outcomes wrestle to reply these queries nicely – StubHub, for instance, can solely run efficient promoting if tickets are literally out there; natural search can not mirror dwell stock. “The advert is definitely fairly useful,” he mentioned.

However he drew a distinction. What OpenAI is doing, in line with Schmetz, “is not actual search promoting. It is simply sponsored queries.” The distinction, in his framing, is the specificity of the industrial sign. OpenAI began accepting advertisers for ChatGPT placements starting February 6, 2026, at premium charges.

On whether or not the AI sector is in a bubble, Schmetz drew a comparability to the late Nineteen Nineties broadband infrastructure build-out. Capital was misallocated, some firms failed, however the infrastructure continued. If an AI bubble collapses, he argued, portfolios and inventory markets endure – however the underlying know-how doesn’t disappear. He was blunt, nevertheless, about promoting as a rescue mechanism: “If you’d like promoting to avoid wasting your butt when the going will get tough, that is hopeless.”

What this implies for digital advertising professionals

The Courageous story just isn’t primarily about one browser. It’s a compressed model of a broader structural query: who has the fitting to monetize the eye of customers as they transfer by the open net?

Brave’s browser has been growing for years, navigating technical confrontations with platforms like YouTube over ad-blocker detection. The expansion from 80 million to 109 million month-to-month lively customers between January 2025 and February 2026 represents 36 % development in 13 months. That trajectory has occurred alongside – not regardless of – the introduction of advert codecs that may have appeared contradictory for a privacy-focused browser.

For entrepreneurs, the Courageous advert platform presents a technically distinct possibility: concentrating on primarily based solely on question and nation, with no behavioral knowledge, no third-party cookies, and no advert ID monitoring. That positions it in another way from the programmatic ecosystem that processes behavioral alerts throughout thousands and thousands of writer pages. Whether or not that distinction interprets to marketing campaign efficiency relies on aims – model consciousness in a privacy-first context differs structurally from behavioral retargeting.

For publishers, the calculus is starker. Courageous’s 109 million month-to-month customers characterize a portion of the web that visits writer web sites with out producing advert income, with out showing in analytics, and with out contributing to the measurement knowledge that determines what content material will get produced. The broader darkish visitors analysis suggests this inhabitants is bigger nonetheless – near 1 billion throughout all blocking mechanisms. At a time when AI is lowering natural search visitors, that invisible viewers represents a compounding monetary strain.

Timeline

Abstract

Who: Courageous Software program, operator of the Courageous privacy-focused browser, by its Chief of Adverts Jean-Paul Schmetz – additionally CEO of Ghostery – chatting with AdExchanger. The dialog entered advertising circles by way of Dustin Cha, Co-CEO of Advert-Protect, and sparked debate involving promoting executives and publishers.

What: Courageous, initially an ad-blocking browser, has constructed a functioning promoting enterprise encompassing search adverts, new tab takeover show adverts, and opt-in notification adverts – whereas persevering with to dam typical writer promoting. The corporate grew from 80 million to 109 million month-to-month lively customers between January 2025 and February 2026. Schmetz outlined the concentrating on mannequin (question and nation solely, no behavioral knowledge), defined Courageous’s place on Google antitrust cures, and addressed the function of promoting in sustaining AI platforms.

When: The AdExchanger Q&A was printed on March 24, 2026. The LinkedIn dialogue adopted the identical day. Courageous’s advert merchandise have been launched incrementally since 2019, with Search Adverts exiting beta in Could 2024.

The place: The Q&A was printed by AdExchanger. The LinkedIn debate occurred on Dustin Cha’s profile. Courageous Search Adverts can be found in managed service format within the US, Canada, UK, France, and Germany. Courageous operates globally throughout desktop and cellular platforms.

Why: The protection issues as a result of Courageous’s mannequin concentrates consideration on a structural query that digital promoting has largely deferred: the legitimacy of a browser monetizing customers on writer web sites whereas blocking writer income. With darkish visitors approaching 1 billion customers and AI lowering natural search visitors concurrently, the monetary strain on open-web publishers is compounding. Courageous’s 109 million customers characterize a part of that strain – and a industrial promoting platform that publishers can not entry.


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