Brave Software has announced that, as part of a global beta program, it now displays “privacy-preserving ads” between results displayed by its web search engine to select users.

All “private search ads” (as Brave calls them) displayed by Brave Search throughout this beta test will be clearly branded according to the company and will not be linked to their identity.

“By design, Brave Search ads are anonymous, clearly marked, and uphold Brave’s commitment to putting users first and to ethical and transparent advertising practices,” Brave said. said.

“Clicking on Brave Search ads is a completely private experience (unlike ads on search engines like Google and Bing). Brave Search only uses your search query, country, and device type to show you ads, and does not retain any type of profile from your searches.”

Brave added that its search engine would only use users’ search query, country and device type to serve ads and would not create ad profiles on their searches to serve personalized ads.

The company also offers Premium Searchwhich offers premium access to Brave Search, allowing those willing to pay $3/month to enjoy an ad-free experience while searching the web.

This helps users “directly support Brave’s mission to make the web a more private place with independent research.”

Brave announced that Brave Search would soon be ad-supported when it ditched Google for its own privacy-centric search engine in October 2021.

The company also said it would introduce a premium ad-free version in the future, but did not provide details regarding the cost of the service at the time.

“Brave Search currently does not display ads, but the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad-supported. Brave Search will also offer an ad-free Premium version in the near future,” Brave said.

The company’s privacy-focused internet search engine Brave Search celebrated its one-year anniversary in June 2022. It became the default search engine for all Brave browser users after hitting a record 2.5 billion hits. queries and seen nearly 5,000% growth since his official launch in June 2021.

This rapid growth was likely aided by a large number of Brave Browser users, who Brave says reaches 50 million monthly active users for the first time in December 2021.