Mike - so glad I randomly clicked on new posts in cryptocurrency and came across your awesome post. I work in the financial industry and quite honestly had no clue as to how massive in monetary value and scope the advertising industry is. Your post is the type of add-value that makes Steemit so great.

While I don't have much to add regarding BAT(you make quite the optimistic case), have you heard of AdEx? They are essentially taking everything that is wrong with the advertising industry and making it right. Their white paper does a pretty good job at outlining the various challenges in the industry and how AdEx aims to solve them. Just to give you an idea, it is essentially the end user (people like you and me) who create a user profile that contains our interests and what ads we would WANT to see. It also talks about protection of user data as well. Not to mention, everything is done in a decentralized manner.

I would be curious to hear your thoughts and maybe even a comparison to BAT? Again, thank you for taking the time to churn out a quality post. I wish I could give you more upvotes!

AdEx Whitepaper:
https://www.adex.network/adex/AdEx-Whitepaper-v1.4.pdf