Why big advertisers are buying Brave’s search ads — despite its small size

Part of its differentiation lies in how it matches ads to queries without using behavioral or personal data. Rather than relying on traditional keyword targeting — and the endless back-and-forth of asking marketers “what keywords do you want?” Using embeddings, Brave offers contextual ads with a system mapping queries and ads into the same semantic space, allowing it to match users with relevant results based on meaning and intent, not just exact phrasing.

For example, this helps ensure ads only appear when there’s clear commercial interest — like showing an ad for “Bayern Munich jerseys,” but not for “Bayern Munich.” Ads chief Jean-Paul Schmetz also recalled an early campaign for a gaming company that asked to use “Donald Trump” as a keyword because a lot of the game’s players were Republicans: “That’s not how search works,” he said. “That’s absolutely not how search works.”

When talking with a new advertiser, Brave gives it a free test to first assess click volume, attribution capabilities depending on their first or third party setup. It also helps advertisers to assess return on ad spend (ROAS) before they agree on a cost-per-click (CPC).

“These are very simple discussions,” Schmetz said. “They get complicated only when [advertisers] don’t see anything and then we try to figure out what the problem is and whether there is another way for them to see the reality.”

So far the approach seems to be working — to a point at least.

According to Brave, more than half of the top 20 largest paid search advertisers globally are now advertising with Brave Search Ads including Amazon Ads, Booking.com, Stubhub and Wayfair.

Nevertheless, Brave’s potential is far from guaranteed. Measurement remains a major hurdle — almost an existential one. Because Brave blocks trackers by default, its users are hard to target or measure via third-party tools, creating a “bit of a blind spot” with attribution when marketers are still over-reliant on third-party data.

“The biggest customers don’t trust Google as a source of truth anyway,” said Schmetz. “So they are unaffected. It’s not like Amazon relies on Google or anything, so the biggest customers typically have zero problem. Then have like the middle size customer. The smaller customers can be okay as well, but they have a different problem because of the size. For the middle of the road customer, it got very tricky.”

Still, success at the top of the advertiser food chain doesn’t guarantee long-term traction for an ad business that remains an outlier in nearly every way. Brave isn’t just trying to reach privacy-conscious users who block ads and avoid tracking — it’s pitching a fundamentally different approach to both organic search and paid media, one that spans traditional listings and the new world of generative AI.

That stance is starting to show returns, especially as the industry shifts toward privacy-first data. As Schmetz put it, people who understand the inner workings of targeted advertising often start looking for alternatives — and Brave wants to be where they land. That might not mean much at the moment with Brave having around 80 million users versus Google’s search monopoly. But if the data holds up, they’re proving to be worth reaching.

Last year, Brave Search Ads experienced a massive 1,500% growth in click volume, according to Brave, which now generates 2.2 million ad clicks per month. It also reported growth in organic search queries, which rose to 1.3 billion in January 2025, nearly double year-over-year. The company says it now has more than half of the top 20 largest worldwide advertising on the platform including Amazon Ads, Booking.com, and Wayfair.

While winning over advertisers for traditional search, Brave is also exploring ways to help users and advertisers with AI-powered alternative search. Brave’s own Summarizer — similar to Google’s AI Overviews — now appears for between 30% and 40% of searches, Schmetz said. He thinks there’s also a natural transition from traditional search ads to AI search ads. For example, he thinks a search for “best hiking boots” in traditional search will be relevant for organic and paid search.

But just like keywords aren’t everything, Schmetz thinks AI summaries aren’t either. He said a summary of a piece of content isn’t always as good as the original, adding that the topic hasn’t been talked about as much as it should discussing AI efficiencies. (Brave also has other generative AI features including its own privacy-focused Leo chatbot.)

“Is the summary of a football game the same as the football game? No, it isn’t. It doesn’t provide you with the same emotions. But you know, 20 years ago when SEO started coming out, people believed they could just basically build a fake publishing business by just SEO-ing everything to death…But it’s not AI that killed [SEO]. It’s just SEO that killed itself.”

Bottom line: Brave’s pitch to advertisers isn’t really about scale, it’s about scarcity. Brave is betting that precision beats volume, banking on a more selective ad strategy from marketers to unlock real revenue in a market where most search queries still fly under the radar. As Schmetz put it, just 4% of queries are currently monetized compared with his estimate of nearly 18% on Google and 39% on Bing.

“Google Ads remains the dominant established platform showcasing scale, reach, and advanced capabilities,” said Gartner director analyst Noam Dorros. “Brave’s market share is relatively small, so it will take time for its influence and adoption to grow. But there is long term potential — as consumers increasingly seek greater privacy online and marketers want to feel less of a ‘forced hand’ by larger mainstream search engines.”