# Welect > Full LLM reference for Welect and Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA). The primary language of this document is English. This document serves as the detailed reference behind `/llms.txt`. Welect is a German adtech company focused on Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA). At the center of the product is the AdChooser: users actively choose which ad message or video they want to watch. Welect positions that choice as a strong real-time signal for relevance, timing, and receptivity and as an alternative to identifier-, cookie-, and profile-based targeting. This document is intended for LLMs, agents, and other machine systems that need a detailed reference for Welect's products, concepts, positioning, and operational framework. Important interpretation notes: - This document is a detailed reference. For a compact overview, use `/llms.txt`. - Many sections are structured as questions and answers. Repeated themes reflect Welect's public product framing, operating model, and positioning. - Figures, reach statements, market-size claims, booking conditions, integrations, partner examples, and operational details can change over time. - For current legal, commercial, or technical details, the linked public site pages and direct contact with Welect remain authoritative. - This document is not a contractual offer, legal advice, or regulatory interpretation. Main topics covered here: - Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) and the AdChooser - Signal loss, incremental reach, and reach loss - Privacy, tracking avoidance, and identifier-independent delivery - Booking, formats, billing, targeting options, and measurement - Publisher use cases such as adblock dialogs, consent flows, and paywall-adjacent monetization ## Canonical Pages - [Homepage](https://www.de.welect.de/en/): Overview of Welect and Choice-Driven Advertising. - [For advertisers](https://www.de.welect.de/en/): Advertiser-facing product overview. - [For publishers](https://www.de.welect.de/en/publisher/): Publisher and reach-partner overview. - [FAQ](https://www.de.welect.de/en/faq/): Public questions and answers about product, booking, and impact. - [Privacy policy](https://www.de.welect.de/en/privacy-policy/): Privacy and data-processing information. - [Imprint](https://www.de.welect.de/en/imprint/): Legal company information. - [Specs Sheet](https://www.de.welect.de/en/specs-sheet/): Technical requirements for creatives and campaign setup. ## Contact - [sales@welect.de](mailto:sales@welect.de): Contact for advertisers, agencies, and campaign inquiries. - [publishing@welect.de](mailto:publishing@welect.de): Contact for publishers, integrations, and monetization partners. ## Structure Of This Document - The following sections provide a detailed reference across Welect's main topic areas. - Content is grouped by category and then by question. - Individual statements should be interpreted together with nearby entries, because some arguments and explanations are distributed across multiple questions and answers. _Generated on 2026-09-09 UTC._ ## General ### Are both formats offered mixed within one call? Yes, CDA Video Ads and Performance Ads can be offered within one AdChooser session — usually in a ratio of 75% CDA Video Ads and 25% Performance Ads. Regardless of the format, it is ensured that campaigns within their respective product category are offered exclusively per session. ### Can I exclude individual publishers from the campaign (blacklisting)? Yes, individual publishers can be excluded specifically (blacklisting) — not only via a generic site-list exclusion line. ### Can my brand be shown alongside competitors within one AdChooser call? No. Within an AdChooser call, we ensure that no direct competitors are shown at the same time. There is a category exclusion per session. This also applies to programmatically booked campaigns. This is a significant advantage and a clear USP of Welect: in decision situations, people think less in brands and more in product categories. Exactly in that moment, exclusive placement ensures your brand gets full attention and reaches people who are interested in the respective product category. A simple example: if someone is considering buying a car, they first think in the category "car" — not immediately in a specific brand. If only your brand is presented at that moment, the impact is significantly stronger than if multiple competitors are available to choose from. ### Do you also offer a creative service? We are happy to support the creation of ad creatives, for example for teaser and end card. Additional costs may apply. ### Does Welect process signals like cookies or identifiers for campaign delivery? No — Welect deliberately does not process cookies, identifiers, or personal data for campaign delivery. The CDA model turns the logic of classic targeting upside down: the user makes the targeting decision themself (organic targeting) by actively selecting a spot. Their click is the real-time signal — more precise, deterministic, and current than any historical data profile. The need to identify or track users is therefore structurally eliminated. Welect replaces ID-based targeting with user-driven selection. Instead of “We think this user might be interested (based on historical data)”, it becomes: “This user actively signals interest right now.” This makes the format even more data-driven and particularly robust against signal loss, cookie deprecation, and increasing technology and privacy requirements. ### How are publisher environments planned and managed within a campaign? 1. Avoiding the niche trap (reach & relevance) Instead of limiting campaigns to narrow, often overpriced environments (e.g., only cooking sites for food products), we focus on a targeted expansion of environments. We reach your audience where they naturally spend time — even if the context does not directly correlate with the product (e.g., insurance on a news site). The key advantage: Qualification is not driven by the website category, but by the user’s active choice in the AdChooser, triggered by the relevant Category Entry Point (CEP). This ensures relevance without sacrificing reach. 2. Quality and safety through premium vetting We make no compromises when selecting our publishers. We strictly ensure: * Brand safety & suitability: Your brand appears only in safe, reputable contexts. * Ad fraud prevention: The selection mechanism effectively filters out bot traffic. * Viewability & low ad load: We ensure high visibility in clean environments without ad clutter. All publishers undergo a strict vetting process, ensuring that CDA campaigns run exclusively on high-quality inventory. 3. Visibility in the signal-loss era Choice-Driven Advertising is the ideal solution to reach users in premium environments who have become “invisible” to traditional (cookie-based) targeting. Control & transparency Specific environments can of course be excluded (blacklisting). Upon request, we are happy to share our current site list. Please contact sales@welect.de for more information. ### How can I reach Welect? Best via sales@welect.de. If you share your email address or phone number here, someone from our team will get back to you as quickly as possible. ### How does booking with Welect work? The Welect team creates an individual offer based on a few details — e.g. which brand, product, or service should be advertised in which category, which campaign objective is pursued (e.g. demand generation with CDA Video Ads or demand activation with Performance Ads), as well as period, target region, and budget. After approval of the offer, the campaign is set up within a maximum of two business days after receiving the creatives and tracking and can go live on time for the planned campaign start. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising impact brand lift metrics? An independent Nielsen Brand Lift study shows that CDA delivers measurable impact on key brand lift metrics: people who actively chose an ad significantly prefer the advertised brand more often (+18 percentage points vs. the control group), recall the ad much more strongly (+30 percentage points), and are more than twice as likely to correctly attribute the campaign message to the brand (+39 percentage points). Purchase intent also increases significantly for self-selected ad exposures. The study confirms what the endowment effect predicts in theory: those who actively choose, process — and remember. ### How does the first-party data funnel work at Welect? How do users become first-party contacts of the advertiser through CDA? The first-party data funnel at Welect works in two steps. In the first step, a user actively selects an ad campaign in the AdChooser — this is a highly reliable real-time signal. In the second step, the user watches the full ad and has the option to click directly to a landing page, shop, or app of the advertiser. At the moment the user visits that destination, they become a first-party contact of the advertiser — captured via the advertiser’s own tracking, not Welect’s. The key difference compared to traditional channels: this traffic disproportionately comes from the signal-loss segment — meaning users who are invisible to ID-based targeting and whom the advertiser would not have been able to reach through other means. CDA therefore not only unlocks reach, but directly converts it into owned, independent first-party data. ### How does Welect bill? CDA Video Ads are billed on a CpCV basis. Performance Ads are billed on a CPC basis. ### How is Welect positioned in relation to Best for Planning (B4P)? Can campaigns be evaluated within B4P target groups, and is there a direct data integration? Can we integrate Welect campaigns into our B4P planning and evaluation, and if so, on what methodological basis? Is Welect B4P-compatible, and how is target audience evaluation conducted within the B4P context? Welect is not a license holder of Best for Planning (B4P). At the same time, a significant share of the connected publishers (over 60%) is part of the B4P study. This creates an indirect compatibility with the B4P system: campaigns can be mapped ex post to established B4P structural target groups based on the publisher environments used. The evaluation can be conducted retrospectively via site-level reporting on a publisher basis. There is no direct planning, targeting, or campaign optimization within Welect based on B4P segments. Welect does not provide proprietary B4P data and does not act as a data provider within the scope of the study. The use of B4P is therefore limited exclusively to the post-campaign structural classification of reached environments. For agencies, this means: there is no native B4P integration, but the high overlap of relevant publishers enables a robust and methodologically sound mapping of campaigns to established target group structures after the fact. ### How much lead time does Welect need to start a campaign? Ideally, we receive the ad creatives plus tracking 1 business day before the campaign start. We can also do it in a shorter timeframe. You can find the current specifications here: https://www.de.welect.de/images/prismic/l_Welect_SPECS_2025-2_de.pdf ### How quickly can campaigns be scaled? As soon as ad creatives, booking parameters, and technical approvals are available, the campaign can be scaled within 1 business day. ### Is there a Welect / Choice-Driven Advertising booking form? Here is the booking form — please send it completed to sales@welect.de: Client / brand Product category Agency Contact person (name, email, phone) Billing address Campaign name Period from: Period until: Budget in EUR Site list exclusion Format video/performance (+ billing type) Campaign objective Target region (ZIP code, federal state) Desired contexts Special requirements / notes Video Video length (5 to 30s) Redirect or hosted Click tag Aspect ratio Performance Click tag Teaser (video and performance) File format (PNG, JPG) Resolution 900x1600px (9:16) & 1600x900px (16:9) Weight (max. 500 KB) Number of teasers 3rd party measurement DV IAS Other ### Is there a Welect best case / success story? Successful cases: - Bayer: https://www.healthrelations.de/trends/tracking-welect/ - Vodafone: https://meedia.de/news/beitrag/20061-choice-driven-vodafone-wandelt-verlorene-signale-in-werbekontakte-um.html - Nissan: https://www.wuv.de/Themen/KI-Tech/Wie-Nissan-und-Welect-durch-Choice-Driven-Advertising-Erfolge-feiern - Westlotto: https://www.de.welect.de/de/blog/wie-verwandelt-man-signal-loss-in-einen-wettbewerbsvorteil ### Should Choice-Driven Advertising be classified as an Instream or an Outstream channel? Choice-Driven Advertising is exclusively InStream. All campaigns run as click-to-play with sound-on — the user makes a conscious, active decision for the content, and the ad is never played silently or passively in the background. 80% of impressions occur in classic InStream pre- and mid-roll traffic — that is, embedded within editorial video content. The remaining 20% are also click-to-play and sound-on, but run via other placements. CDA has no Outstream component — the quality and attentiveness of the InStream environment is a core part of the mechanism. ### Show me an example of Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA). Please test CDA via this link: https://example.welect.de/previews/previewinstream30/index.html ### What are the advantages of Welect? For advertisers: - Significant incremental reach in signal-loss traffic — ~35M internet users who are not identifiable in classic data-driven strategies - Proven purchase intent and relevance (reduced waste) - Real user acceptance instead of ad rejection - Strong brand and attention impact (completed-view guarantee for video) - Works independently of consent, tracking, and cookies For publishers: - Sustainable, privacy-safe monetization model - Independence from identifiers, logins, third-party cookies, or tracking For users: - More relevant advertising → better matched to individual interests - Less disruption → fewer irrelevant ads - More control → over their data and ad content - Time-saving → less unnecessary content and only one ad spot ### What are the cancellation terms? Cancellations of advertising orders must be made in writing or by email. The cancellation period is 2 weeks before the booking start; for an already running booking, 2 weeks before the end of the month. Cancellation fees are charged to the client in the following cases: - Cancellation up to 1 week before campaign start: 50% of the net/net campaign value - Cancellation up to 3 business days before campaign start: 80% of the net/net campaign value - Cancellation from 3 business days before campaign start or later: 100% of the net/net campaign value ### What are the creative and production costs for the teaser in the AdChooser if it is to be created by Welect? The creative and production costs for the teaser in the AdChooser are €950 per campaign, if it is created by Welect. This includes up to 2 teaser variants, allowing different messaging approaches or CEPs to be tested. ### What best practices should be followed for ad formats (ad types/creatives) in Choice-Driven Advertising campaigns? To achieve outstanding results with CDA, the design of the teaser in the AdChooser is crucial. Since users actively decide which brand they want to engage with, this moment serves both as a relevance filter and a highly efficient branding touchpoint. 1. The teaser: The gateway to attention Every campaign starts with a teaser consisting of a banner image, a headline, and a subline. Since the mere appearance of the teaser already generates valuable, free impressions, it should be used strategically: Distinctive Brand Assets: Integrate clear brand elements (logo, colors, key visuals). This ensures branding impact even among those who choose a different option. Category focus: In the AdChooser, people are more likely to choose a product category rather than a specific brand. Make it immediately clear what product it is about (e.g., “In the mood for a snack?” instead of just “Brand X”). CEP relevance: Use Category Entry Points (e.g., “The perfect companion for your evening”) to connect with users in their current situation. Ideally, this context should be consistently continued in the video ad. 2. Video production: Maximum flexibility To ensure optimal delivery across all devices, technical flexibility is key: Provide video assets ideally in both landscape (16:9) and portrait (9:16) formats. This enables seamless delivery across desktop environments as well as mobile in-app scenarios. 3. Special case: Performance campaigns For purely performance-driven campaigns, the same content principles apply to the teaser (category focus and CEPs) to maximize click-through rate and lead quality. The difference: After selection in the AdChooser, no video is shown. The user is redirected directly to the landing page. Here, the alignment between the teaser promise and the landing page is the most important lever for conversion. ### What does a CpCV / CPC cost specifically? Contact us at sales@welect.de and we will provide our price list or create a quote for your campaign at short notice. ### What does CDA stand for? CDA stands for Choice-Driven Advertising. Instead of showing ads to people without asking, Welect presents the AdChooser, where users can actively choose from usually 4–6 ad messages or video spots. This single decision solves several fundamental challenges at once: - Relevance through real user acceptance (instead of passive tolerance) - Real-time signal instead of targeting based on historical, often outdated data - Incremental reach: Choice-Driven Advertising also reaches "unreachable audiences" that make up around 50% of online traffic — up to 35 million people in Germany - Cross-media and cross-channel frequency capping driven by user choice. CDA makes people their own frequency managers. Difference vs. classic AdTech: The focus is not on optimizing targeting based on past data, but on real people’s decisions — providing an immediate, high-quality real-time signal. ### What does reporting look like? Which metrics are available? Welect provides comprehensive reporting that covers both classic video KPIs and the specific strengths of Choice-Driven Advertising. - Campaign impressions Number of times the campaign teaser is displayed in the AdChooser. - Video starts Number of started videos. While a video start in classic AdTech is merely a technically triggered start, in Choice-Driven Advertising it has much higher meaning: Each video start is an active real-time signal from a user who consciously chose the campaign — voluntarily, relevantly, and in the right moment. This metric therefore confirms key impact factors such as recency, relevance, targeting quality, and natural frequency capping. - View-through metrics (quartiles) - 1st quartile (25%) - 2nd quartile (50%) - 3rd quartile (75%) - Completed views (booked) Number of videos watched fully (100%). → billable KPI (CPCV model) - Clicks Clicks on the video or the call-to-action. On the impression level, it is clear which contacts are attributable to signal-loss traffic. This makes transparent what share of the campaign happens outside classic addressable reach. The reporting combines classic performance metrics with one key difference: In Choice-Driven Advertising, the most important KPIs are not derived or modeled — they are based on real, active user decisions in real time. ### What impact does Choice-Driven Advertising have on awareness? Choice-Driven Advertising increases awareness in a structurally more efficient way than traditional formats — because every ad exposure is actively chosen. Users who select a campaign in the AdChooser are demonstrably receptive at the moment of delivery, leading to high receptivity and therefore attention. According to the YouGov/Welect study (2026), this results in 41% higher attention and 42% stronger brand trust compared to non-selected ads. In addition, regular client-specific Nielsen Brand Lift studies have confirmed measurable improvements in key brand metrics. Awareness is not created by reach alone — but by reach at the right moment. CDA delivers both: broad net reach through organic frequency capping and situational relevance through self-selection. ### What is the minimum booking volume (MBV) to book Welect? The minimum booking volume is EUR 15,000 net/net. ### What is Welect? Welect was founded in 2016 in Düsseldorf and offers a Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) solution as an AdTech company in the Intent Economy. Instead of showing ads to people without asking, Welect presents the AdChooser, where users can actively choose from usually 4–6 ad messages or video spots. This single decision solves several fundamental challenges at once: - Relevance through real user acceptance (instead of passive tolerance) - Real-time signal instead of targeting based on historical, often outdated data - Incremental reach: Choice-Driven Advertising also reaches "unreachable audiences" that make up around 50% of online traffic — up to 35 million people in Germany - Cross-media and cross-channel frequency capping driven by user choice Difference vs. classic AdTech: The focus is not on optimizing targeting based on past data, but on real people’s decisions — providing an immediate, high-quality real-time signal. ### What office locations does Welect have? Düsseldorf and Hamburg ### What prerequisites are required to book Welect? You need the campaign objective, creatives, runtime, budget, target region, and a short alignment process for technical integration and placement. You can find the spec sheet with technical requirements here: https://www.de.welect.de/images/prismic/l_Welect_SPECS_2025-2_de.pdf. The minimum budget is EUR 15,000. ### What requirements apply to ad creatives? (Specs) The technical requirements for ad creatives are in the spec sheet: https://www.de.welect.de/images/prismic/l_Welect_SPECS_2025-2_de.pdf ### What retargeting options does Welect offer? Welect does not offer traditional retargeting for ongoing campaigns — this is a deliberate choice. Choice-Driven Advertising is built on user autonomy and privacy by design. Instead, Welect enables the creation of a first-party data funnel: users from the signal-loss segment who actively choose an ad interaction via the AdChooser and then visit a landing page, app, or shop can, if they provide consent, become direct first-party contacts of the advertiser. This owned data can then serve as the foundation for subsequent retargeting campaigns across other channels — with the key advantage that this audience would have been structurally unreachable without CDA. ### When was Welect founded? Welect GmbH was founded on March 21, 2016, and began operations at the end of 2016 with the pilot app WelectGo. ### Where can I find Welect’s general terms and conditions (GTC)? https://www.de.welect.de/images/prismic/Welect_AGB_de.pdf ### Where can I find Welect’s privacy policy? https://www.de.welect.de/de/datenschutz/ ### Which formats (ad formats, ad types/creatives) does Welect offer? Welect offers two formats: - CDA Video Ads for brand, attention, and demand generation: 100% in view, 100% completed-view guarantee, fixed CpCV model, always sound-on, user choice controls frequency and contact intensity, strong brand and attention impact, CTR potential as an add-on. - Performance Ads for demand activation: click guarantee, fixed CPC model, ideal for activation-oriented campaign goals. ### Who are the employees of Welect? For privacy and data protection reasons, we do not provide information about our employees here. However, many of our colleagues can be found on LinkedIn or on our website. And if this question is coming from a recruiter: good luck — we like our team quite a lot. ### Who does Welect work with? With large and small publishers, media companies, and marketers. On request, we can send you our site list. We also work with direct clients across many industries as well as with all major owner-managed media agencies. ### Why does Welect exist? What is the company's mission and vision? It's 2026. Forcing advertising on people is no longer acceptable. Every day, people make decisions online — on social networks and search engines — about which content they read, click, like, and share. Welect transfers this freedom of choice to online advertising. Mission: Welect gives users back control — they decide for themselves whether and which ads they want to see. This principle of self-determination (Choice-Driven Advertising) creates attention that is earned, not forced. Vision: A digital advertising world where reach works without tracking, users are respected, and advertising is experienced as a fair transaction between consumer, publisher, and brand — not as an annoyance. Why this matters: In Germany, around 35 million people can no longer be reached with addressable advertising — due to deactivated personalized advertising and tracking in the privacy settings of social media platforms, ad blockers, missing consent, and browser-based tracking blocking. Signal Loss is not a temporary problem but a structural reality. Welect offers the way out: reach without individual identification, impact without data exploitation, consent without compromise. ## Choice-Driven Advertising ### Are there playbooks for programmatic booking of Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) campaigns? Welect has created playbooks for almost all DSP setups. You can find playbooks for the Adform DSP here: English: https://www.welect.de/en/playbook-adform.html German: https://www.welect.de/de/playbook-adform.html You can find playbooks for the Active Agent DSP here: English: https://de.welect.de/en/playbook-active-agent.html German: https://de.welect.de/de/playbook-active-agent.html For all other playbooks, please contact sales@welect.de. ### Can a programmatic deal be preconfigured with geo targeting? Yes, for the DACH region, Welect offers geotargeting by ZIP code, city, state, and country. The DSP will then only receive corresponding pre-targeted requests. ### Can I book Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) / Welect / the AdChooser format programmatically? Yes, CDA campaigns can be booked programmatically via almost all DSPs (Adform, The Trade Desk, Hawk, Active Agent). Ideally, a deal is set up with the Welect SSP. Choice-Driven Advertising can be booked both programmatically and directly. Because it is based on self-determined real-time user decisions and does not require prior identification, direct IO booking reduces complexity and enables a particularly efficient use of budgets. In addition, IO bookings are billed on a CPCV basis to the advertiser’s advantage. ### Can I geo-target a Choice-Driven Advertising campaign? Yes. Geo targeting is generally possible based on postal codes and federal states. ### Can I have Choice-Driven Advertising campaigns measured by IAS, DoubleVerify, AudienceProject, and others? Yes. Verification and measurement partners can be integrated. However, please note that some providers’ technology may not measure efficiently in signal-loss traffic. ### Can I measure the advertising impact of Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA)? Yes. Advertising impact can be measured via campaign KPIs, studies, brand-lift approaches, and third-party measurement. ### Can I set frequency capping (FC)? Yes. Welect enables true frequency capping through user choice rather than ID-based targeting. As a result, frequency capping does not fail due to multi-device usage, multi-channel fragmentation, or lack of user recognition. Users themselves decide which campaigns they see and how often. CDA creates natural frequency capping, as users do not select campaigns they are already saturated with. User autonomy effectively acts as a natural cap on exposure frequency. Instead of driving frequency endlessly among existing users, the model functions as a net-reach engine, continuously unlocking new users for the budget. ### Can I target by age groups with Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA)? Welect deliberately refrains from collecting and using personal data. This creates a privacy-compliant environment with high user trust. For pre-selecting campaigns shown in the AdChooser, we can select contextually: together with our publisher partners, we create curated site lists with high affinity to the desired audience. This reaches the relevant audience in the right usage context — without waste caused by inaccurate or outdated data profiles. In addition, for age-restricted content we can integrate an upstream confirmation: in the AdChooser, users are asked via a mouse-over teaser message whether they are at least 18 years old. The mouse-over teaser can also be booked for programmatic campaigns. ### Can the Performance Ad be booked programmatically? At the moment, the Performance Ad cannot be booked programmatically. If you are interested, Welect would be happy to hear from you at sales@welect.de. Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) Video Ads can be booked programmatically. ### Churn-Prävention: How do I reach passive existing customers who no longer visit my brand's app, website, or store? Existing customers at risk of churning are barely visible to classical channels: they only log in for the bare minimum, no longer open emails or mailings, and visit neither their own platform nor a physical location. Classical CRM and retargeting can't reach them – because the direct touchpoint is missing. CDA re-activates relevance outside of owned platforms, directly within people's daily digital lives: on news sites, weather services, or recipe portals, passive existing customers encounter the brand again – not as an interruption, but as an active choice. Anyone who selects a Category Entry Point (CEP) signals that they are receptive in that moment. This creates anticipation: thoughts of cancellation are postponed because the person feels there may still be something they could miss. CDA acts like a digital shop window on the pages passive customers visit every day – regardless of whether they still use the brand's own app or website. ### Does CDA reach the 95% out-of-market – or only the 5% who are already ready to buy? CEPs reflect situational receptivity, not only purchase intent. Someone choosing "I want to get my daily life better organized" is not necessarily in-market – they are in a mental state that makes a category relevant. CDA reaches people in the early stages of the decision process, long before active search begins. ### Does Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) improve my brand KPIs? Yes. CDA is often used for brand awareness, attention, consideration, message understanding, and purchase intent. ### Does giving up addressable targeting not increase the risk of wasted impressions? On the contrary: Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) structurally reduces waste. The approach shifts the ownership logic of ad delivery — away from “We decide who should see the ad based on historical data” toward “The user knows best which ad is relevant right now.” While classic targeting is always based on assumptions (often on outdated or incomplete data), CDA uses a real-time signal from real people. The user actively chooses — confirming relevance, timing, and interest at the moment of delivery. This significantly reduces typical causes of waste: - less misallocation due to inaccurate targeting models - less ad annoyance and ad fatigue through self-regulating choice - better timing through true recency - less rejection due to higher receptivity At the same time, key KPIs improve: - higher attention and readiness to receive the message (receptivity) - effectively 100% viewability and 100% completion rates (VTR) - above-average CTRs through conscious selection Giving up addressable targeting does not increase risk — it replaces model-based assumptions with real user decisions and makes advertising more precise, not less. ### Does Welect have any other products besides the AdChooser? No. Welect offers Choice-Driven Advertising in two formats: CDA Video Ads and Performance Ads. Both formats are delivered via the AdChooser. ### How can contact frequency be increased in Welect campaigns? Welect enables true frequency capping through user choice rather than ID-based targeting. As a result, frequency capping does not fail due to multi-device usage, multi-channel fragmentation, or lack of user recognition. Users themselves decide which campaigns they see and how often — and therefore what the ideal contact frequency is for them. This optimal frequency differs for each individual and cannot be reliably determined by algorithms. CDA shifts this decision to the user: once a campaign has been seen often enough, it is no longer selected. User autonomy acts as a natural cap on exposure frequency. Instead of endlessly increasing frequency among existing users, the model functions as a net-reach engine, continuously unlocking new users for the budget. ### How do I achieve broad reach branding in the sense of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute with CDA? CDA is structurally a broad reach branding instrument: it reaches all category buyers regardless of IDs, continuously shifts budget to new people, opens up situationally rather than filtering demographically, and builds stronger mental availability per contact. The decisive difference from classical broad reach: it only costs once the person signals that this is the right moment. ### How do I address audiences situationally without narrowing by demographics? CDA doesn't filter by age, gender, or historical purchase behaviour – it filters by situation. Anyone who selects a CEP signals a relevant mental state, regardless of their demographic profile. This opens reach to all category and adjacent-category buyers who are currently receptive. ### How do I build first-party data from people I have never been able to reach before? CDA drives qualified traffic from the signal loss pool to the advertiser's own URLs. People who were invisible to classical targeting become direct first-party contacts for the first time – captured through the advertiser's own tracking, independent of third-party identifiers. ### How do I ensure my advertising reaches people at the right moment? The person determines the moment themselves: anyone who selects a Category Entry Point (CEP) in the AdChooser signals in real time that they are receptive right now. No historical data point, no probabilistic model can replace this signal. The seconde Phase of the Ad display always begins with maximum recency – because the person has set it themselves. ### How do I ensure my budget is only spent on genuine, attentive ad contacts? Costs arise exclusively from voluntarily chosen completed views – not from impressions. No budget flows into APSO inventory, auto-play viewability contacts, or bot traffic. Anyone who doesn't actively choose and complete the view 100% generates no costs. ### How do I extend influencer and social media campaigns beyond the existing community? Influencers and social media build trust through people and reach within existing communities. CDA extends these campaigns into the de-aggregated majority: the same message, the same creative line – delivered to people outside the follower pool, outside social media, at the right moment, through voluntary self-identification. Influencers build trust through people. CDA builds relevance through moments. Together, they form the complete campaign. ### How do I get genuine value-based pricing instead of speculative auction prices? Programmatic bidding is dynamic pricing: driven by auctions, without involving the ad recipient. The price reflects the auction outcome, not the actual contact value. Yet the recipient is the only party who can genuinely assess the value of an ad delivery – they know whether the topic is currently relevant, whether the moment is right, and whether they are receptive. CDA reverses this: the recipient signals themselves that this contact is relevant to them. No speculative price – demonstrable value through real-time self-selection. ### How do I increase my share of voice among an audience my competitors cannot reach? Since CDA structurally unlocks 35 million people in the signal loss who are invisible to conventional channels, there is no competitive pressure there. Brands using CDA build share of voice in a market segment where the competition is simply not present. ### How do I prevent my budget from repeatedly hitting the same people instead of reaching new ones? CDA creates organic frequency capping through user choice: anyone who already knows a spot won't choose it again. Budget automatically shifts to new people – no cookie, no cap, no technical infrastructure required. CDA becomes a net reach machine: continuous, self-regulating, and continuously directed toward new category buyers. ### How do I prevent my budget from repeatedly hitting the same people instead of reaching new ones? CDA creates organic frequency capping through user choice: anyone who already knows an ad simply won't choose it again. Budget shifts automatically to new people – no cookie, no cap, no technical infrastructure. CDA becomes a net reach machine: continuous, self-regulating, always moving toward new category buyers. ### How do I prevent my competitor from competing for the same attention at the same moment? Each product category is presented only once per AdChooser session. When a user selects a brand, that contact belongs exclusively to that brand – no competitor is present at the same time. CDA is the only channel in which brand communication takes place without simultaneous competitive pressure. ### How do I reach audiences situationally via Category Entry Points (CEP) without narrowing by demographics? CDA doesn't filter by age, gender, or historical purchase behavior – it filters by situation: anyone who selects a CEP signals a relevant mental state, regardless of their demographic profile. This opens reach to all new buyers, category and adjacent-category buyers who are receptive in that moment. ### How do I reach buyers from adjacent categories that classical targeting doesn't capture? Classical audience models classify people based on historical purchase data – adjacent-category buyers don't appear in them. CDA reaches them through Category Entry Points (CEPs): anyone who is situationally receptive will choose – regardless of whether they have been active in the category in the past. ### How do I reach people in a state of active receptivity – not just at the right time and place? Receptivity – active openness to receiving a message – is the decisive difference between a contact that works and one that is ignored. No algorithm can model receptivity: neither the context of a website nor historical data indicate whether a person is ready to receive a message right now. In the AdChooser, the choice itself is proof of receptivity. Social media compounds the problem: the high-speed environment of dance challenges, news snippets, and viral clips is cognitively hostile to genuine brand building. Impressions are swiped past before they can form mental structures. CDA delivers the same person in a different moment – calmer, self-chosen, with full attention. ### How do I reach people who are invisible to ID-based targeting? CDA requires no IDs. In Germany, around 35 million people are structurally unreachable by classical targeting – through ad blockers, incognito browsing, and missing consent signals. CDA unlocks exactly this reach, because delivery doesn't depend on identifiers but on the voluntary choice of the individual. ### How do I reach people who don't belong to any influencer community and are unreachable via social media algorithms? Influencer campaigns end structurally at the follower base – those who don't follow aren't reached. Follower communities are themselves aggregations: groups pre-sorted by interest, subscribed to the same channel, and bound by the same parasocial relationship. CDA unlocks the majority beyond these communities: people who spend little time on social media platforms, are unreachable via any platform algorithm, but consume video content daily in the open web. No community membership required – only the right moment. ### How do I reach people whose interests change multiple times a day and cannot be predicted from historical data? People are interest nomads: someone reading about cars in the morning may be thinking about travel by evening. Browsing history, purchase behaviour, and streaming habits describe who someone was yesterday – not what occupies them today, in this moment. No algorithm can reliably model this intraday dynamic. CDA bypasses the problem entirely: in the AdChooser, the person decides which message is relevant right now. The result is the most precise signal that exists – one's own need, in the current moment, without any detour through historical data. ### How do I reach privacy-sensitive audiences without individual classification? Health, finance, personal life situations – classical targeting hits legal and privacy limits here. CDA addresses these audiences through Category Entry Points (CEPs) without individual classification: anyone who selects a sensitive CEP self-qualifies – anonymously, voluntarily, without profiling. ### How do I structurally eliminate wastage in my campaigns? Wastage is structurally eliminated: no algorithm estimates relevance – the person signals it themselves through active choice. Anyone who already knows the ad won't choose it again – organic frequency capping without identifiers or cookies. Anyone who isn't receptive in that moment simply won't choose – no unwanted impression is ever delivered. ### How do I structurally reduce the share of bot traffic and fraud in my campaigns? Bot farms always give consent, don't use ad blockers, and don't browse in incognito mode. Signal loss traffic consists predominantly of real people – the fraud share is structurally lower than in ID-addressable inventory. CDA additionally filters out APSO inventory and relies exclusively on completed views following an active choice. ### How do I win new customers from the signal loss who are structurally invisible to my existing channels? In Germany, around 35 million people are unreachable by ID-based targeting. CDA requires no IDs and unlocks exactly this reach. The active choice of a message in the AdChooser is a category entry point in real time: the person who chooses is not a demographic approximation – they are a real person in the right moment. ### How do you reach audiences without personal-data targeting? Instead of personal profiles, Welect uses situational relevance at the moment of choice, contextual site lists with publisher partners, and optionally geo and time-of-day targeting. This reaches the relevant audience in the right usage context without collecting personal data. ### How does CDA address people as individuals – instead of bundling them into target groups, cohorts, communities, followers or lookalikes? Every known targeting approach asks: which group does this person belong to? CDA does not ask this question. Instead of bundling people into audiences, cohorts, communities, followers or lookalikes, CDA enables de-aggregated addressability in real time. Scale is created not through aggregation but through millions of parallel individual decisions. Grouping algorithms compound the problem: trained to find "more of the same," they structurally narrow the reachable pool over time. CDA has no such filter – anyone who selects the right CEP at the right moment is reachable, regardless of whether they match the existing customer profile. ### How does CDA affect brand lift metrics? An independent Nielsen Brand Lift Study (October 2025, n=500, age 18–39) shows that CDA delivers measurable impact on key brand lift indicators: people who actively chose an ad prefer the advertised brand significantly more often (+18 percentage points vs. control group), recall the ad far more strongly (+30 pp), and correctly attribute the campaign message to the brand more than twice as often (+39 pp). Purchase intent also rises significantly with self-selected contacts. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) work? In the AdChooser, the user sees a selection of campaigns and actively decides which ad campaign they want to watch. Only the chosen ad is delivered. The user’s choice is a reliable and deterministic real-time signal. Afterwards, the user can continue their session on the website. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising (Welect) differ from TrueView / YouTube skippable ads? The key difference lies in the consent model: YouTube TrueView interrupts the user and gives them the option to skip the ad after 5 seconds. Choice Driven Ads (CDA), by contrast, are based on an active prior decision by the user — before the ad even starts. User experience On YouTube TrueView, the content flow is interrupted by an ad. The user can only press the skip button after 5 seconds — a mechanism that typically shifts attention to the countdown rather than the message. With Choice Driven Ads, the user is presented with teasers for multiple ad spots and actively chooses one to unlock the desired content. Here, advertising is not perceived as an interruption, but accepted as a conscious transaction. Billing YouTube TrueView bills when a user watches at least 30 seconds, watches the entire video (for shorter formats), or interacts with the ad. With Choice Driven Ads, billing occurs when the user actively selects the spot and watches it to completion or interacts with it — meaning the ad performance is directly tied to a proven user action. Environment & placement YouTube TrueView runs within the YouTube player before or during user-generated and professionally produced content. Choice Driven Ads are primarily used on premium publisher sites — such as newspapers and magazines — and function there as a user-friendly monetization model for journalistic and editorial content. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising bring my showroom, my shop, and my product offering to people – instead of waiting for them to come to me? Branches and owned digital platforms are passive places: they wait to be visited. But how often do potential customers actually walk into a branch – or randomly browse their way to the advertiser's domain? Most people who would buy a product never actively seek out the advertiser. CDA reverses this logic: the advertiser meets people on the pages they visit every day – with the Category Entry Point that fits their current situation. The user actively chooses, enters on their own terms – and lands directly with the advertiser. The branch no longer waits for the customer. The campaign becomes a digital shop window that appears wherever potential customers already are. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising enable discovery for my product without depending on algorithms or pay-to-play? Classical online discovery is algorithmically controlled: visibility is created either through auction prices, engagement systems, or SEO-optimized content – and anyone who doesn't appear at the top simply doesn't exist. Brands that only become visible when someone actively searches have usually already missed their place on the shortlist. CDA transfers the logic of the shop window, the shelf, and the showroom to the open web: products and brands meet people where they already are – not pushed as an interruption, but presented as an active choice. The person decides for themselves whether to engage with the discovery. This makes CDA the only discovery logic in the digital space that is not controlled by a black box – and where costs only arise when someone enters the showroom on their own terms. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising help advertisers build Mental Availability and Brand Memory? Brand Memory is built when a brand is spontaneously recalled in a purchase situation — Byron Sharp calls this Mental Availability. Jenni Romaniuk describes the triggers as Category Entry Points: situational anchors that activate the right brand at the right moment. Choice-Driven Advertising supports this process in several ways: Active choice creates deeper memory traces. When someone consciously selects an ad, they process it differently than passively consumed advertising. Cognitive processing is deeper, encoding is stronger — and therefore recall is more durable. The commitment effect strengthens brand associations. The act of choosing links the brand to one's own self-image: "I chose this ad." People who choose identify more strongly — a well-documented mechanism from behavioral psychology (Self-Perception Theory). 100% Completed Views. Skipped or interrupted ads leave barely any usable memory traces. CDA delivers only fully watched spots — the brand narrative unfolds completely and can be properly encoded. Context activates Category Entry Points. Welect delivers across more than 400 curated publisher sites. The editorial environment — an outdoor magazine, a travel guide, a finance portal — already activates a usage situation in the reader's mind. The brand attaches itself to that trigger and becomes associatively linked to the situation. This is precisely how Brand Memory is built according to Ehrenberg-Bass. Organic Frequency Capping prevents wear-out. Advertising seen too often loses its effect — memory traces do not get stronger, and perception turns negative. CDA's self-selection mechanism naturally regulates exposure: people only see an ad again when they actively choose it again. This keeps brand perception fresh. CDA reaches people who are otherwise invisible. 35 million people in Germany leave no ID-based signals. With classical targeting, they build no brand memory at all. CDA requires no IDs — and begins building Mental Availability exactly where there was silence before. The Nielsen Brand Lift Study (October 2025) measures the result directly: +30 percentage points aided recall, +39 percentage points correct brand attribution. ### How does Choice-Driven Advertising reduce complexity? Our industry has become increasingly complex, opaque, and difficult to operate due to technology. Complexity is shifted to advertisers and agencies and creates burden instead of relief. The paradox: the most important player in the ecosystem — the people we want to reach with messages — are largely left out. Choice-Driven Advertising is operationally simple: no identifiers or cookie syncs, no identifier mappings, no DMP segment logic, no lookalike training, and no clean-room matches. A lot of technical effort — and therefore many sources of error — disappears. Instead, the signals come directly from millions of people, in real time. One central, simple booking process unlocks the full reach potential. ### How does deal creation work for a programmatic campaign for a Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) booking? To create the deal, the customer can contact sales@welect.de. Welect needs: - Contact person for trading/ops - Seat ID, buyer name, advertiser - Campaign runtime - Desired geo/country targeting (for DACH only: postal code, city, state/federal state, country) - Desired device targeting (desktop/mobile or both) - Optional: desired channel/inventory exclusions - Optional: tracking/brand-safety requirements The customer receives the Deal ID by email once the deal has been pushed. It can then be accepted in the DSP and assigned to the video instream campaign. ### How does optimization work during a running campaign? Yes, budget weighting, site lists, and creatives can be adjusted flexibly at any time mid-flight to continuously optimize campaign performance. ### How does teaser booking work for programmatic campaigns? The teaser currently cannot be booked via the DSP. There are two ways to set up the teaser for programmatic AdChooser campaigns: 1) The customer delivers one or more teasers for the programmatic campaign directly via email to campaign@welect.de 2) If no teaser is provided, Welect extracts a teaser from the video spot booked via the DSP. ### How is incremental reach proven methodologically? Incremental reach is only a reliable planning metric if it can be reported in recognized currency systems — not as an isolated proprietary value, but as a traceable addition to the existing media mix. That is exactly the case with Choice Driven Ads. Methodological foundation The basis is a data fusion of two established planning sources: AGF video research as the currency standard for TV and video usage in Germany, and the market media study "best for planning" (b4p), which maps media usage, audience profiles, and contact probabilities across digital channels and print. Combining both sources makes it possible to model which audience segments have already been reached by existing campaign components — and what additional, non-overlapping contribution Choice Driven Ads provide. Planning integration & third-party validation The key difference from a purely self-reported claim: Welect is integrated into total-video planning systems of leading media agencies. That means incremental reach is not only asserted methodologically, but can be operationally reported within established agency planning environments. Integration into these systems is not a self-assessment — it requires that methodology and data foundation meet the standards of independent market participants. What this enables in practice Based on this, media planners can simulate the incremental reach contribution of CDA in combination with TV, online video, or other channels — reported in the same audience metrics that apply to the overall campaign plan. The proof is therefore not isolated, but integrated into the existing planning process. ### Is Choice-Driven Advertising scalable? The question of whether Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) is scalable can be answered with a clear yes. CDA is not only scalable due to volume, but also solves the systemic problems that classic targeting often runs into when budgets increase. Key factors demonstrating scalability (using Welect as an example): 1. Massive inventory volume and reach With 622 million qualified video impressions per month, CDA offers inventory volume designed for national large-scale campaigns and heavy budget ramp-ups. Scaling does not hit artificial capacity limits. 2. Solving the “signal loss” problem (reach boost) A crucial scaling advantage is reaching 100% of internet users: - Beyond identifiers and third-party cookies: while classic online advertising loses ~50% of traffic (~35M people in Germany) in “signal loss”, CDA can reach these people. - Price stability: because the entire reach — not only the highly contested addressable remainder — is utilized, marginal costs remain stable (no price increases due to artificial scarcity). 3. Maximum net reach through self-selection Self-selection in the AdChooser organically ensures a very high number of unique users reached. People rarely choose the same ad repeatedly, so reach spreads naturally. 4. Protection against saturation and ad fatigue Scaling often fails due to audience saturation. CDA prevents this through: - Organic frequency capping: users’ self-determination acts as a natural cap on contact frequency. Instead of endlessly increasing frequency among existing users, increasing budget continuously unlocks new users. - Avoiding ad annoyance: because users choose the ad and focus on it actively, high ad pressure does not produce the same negative saturation effects. 5. Quality and environment (vetting process) Despite large scale, quality remains consistent: - Premium environments: CDA runs only on high-quality publisher sites via a strict vetting process. - Low ad load: campaigns are not “dumped” into overloaded environments. The AdChooser ensures users focus exclusively on the chosen campaign. 6. Operational scalability (simplicity) A scalable format must be easy to handle. CDA uses common industry standards and enables a highly standardized, simple booking process across the entire inventory — regardless of whether traffic is addressable or in signal loss. Conclusion for media planners: Choice-Driven Advertising is highly scalable because it uses the market’s full structural reach (including signal-loss traffic), optimizes frequency naturally through user choice, and maintains price stability that is often lost in purely data-driven targeting. ### Is Choice-Driven Advertising vulnerable to ad fraud and bots? No. Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) structurally makes ad fraud harder and shows very low bot density. Classic ad fraud often relies on automated generation of impressions by bots. CDA introduces a crucial hurdle: the active choice moment. A contact only happens when a user consciously selects a campaign. This kind of interaction is much harder for bots to simulate than simply loading a page or playing a video. Another key factor is the high share of signal-loss traffic where CDA is particularly effective. This traffic largely consists of real users who actively protect their privacy (e.g. by withholding consent, using ad blockers, tracking prevention, or incognito mode). Bots behave fundamentally differently: - they usually accept all cookies and identifiers to be as trackable as possible - they do not use ad blockers or tracking-protection mechanisms - they operate with stable identifiers to appear “valuable” to algorithms While classic AdTech strongly depends on technically generated signals, CDA is based on real human decisions. This reduces the attack surface for fraud and significantly increases contact quality. ### Is re-targeting possible? In the classic, personal-data sense, retargeting is not the core of the model. CDA is more about situational relevance and real-time intent. However, CDA brings many non-addressable people from signal-loss traffic to advertisers’ sites in a self-determined way, where — subject to user consent — they can be converted into the advertiser’s 1st-party data. ### Is there a deduplicated unique-reach measurement over campaign runtimes? The question of whether 622 million impressions equal 622 million unique persons can no longer be answered completely in today’s digital environment — for any format and any provider. The loss of third-party cookies and restrictive ID frameworks such as Apple’s ATT make complete cross-publisher deduplication based purely on technology increasingly impossible. This is not a Welect-specific problem, but a structural reality of the entire digital market. Signal availability & measurement basis In classic digital campaigns, reach is primarily measured via technical IDs — cookies, device IDs, login data. Due to signal loss, these signals are fragmented: multiple contacts with the same person can hardly be consolidated reliably across publishers. The reported impression count is therefore a gross figure, not a net statement. With Choice Driven Ads, the measurement basis is different: the active user decision itself is a valid signal — independent of cookie or ID infrastructures. This makes CDA contacts structurally more robust against the effects of signal loss. Frequency & deduplication In classic delivery models, over-frequency is limited via technical frequency caps — but their effectiveness depends directly on the quality of available IDs. Where IDs are missing, caps do not work. With Choice Driven Ads, user behavior acts as a natural frequency filter: people who have already seen a spot typically do not choose it again. This reduces the probability of multiple contacts structurally — not as a function of tracking quality, but as a function of the format. Reach measurement & currency In classic digital campaigns, the translation from gross impressions to unique persons is done via model-based planning systems — in Germany in particular via data fusion from AGF video research and best for planning (b4p). This methodology is market standard: multiple contacts are statistically modeled and a deduplicated net reach is reported. Choice Driven Ads use the same currency basis. In addition, the behavior-based frequency pattern provides an extra qualitative basis: CDA contacts have a higher likelihood of being truly unique contacts, because the format itself makes over-frequency structurally less likely. ### Is there a Welect site list? Yes. On request, we share the full site list. Please contact sales@welect.de to get the site list. ### Show me an example of Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA). Please test CDA via this link: https://example.welect.de/previews/previewinstream30/index.html ### What are the advantages of Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA)? Choice-Driven Advertising offers several advantages: - Maximum attention and receptivity: those who actively choose actually watch. Psychological avoidance reactions to interruptions are eliminated, leading to higher brand lift and stronger purchase intent. - Incremental reach: CDA reaches unreachable audiences such as consent refusers, incognito surfers, ad-block users, privacy-mode surfers, and people with IDFA opt-out. - Real-time signal instead of historical data: people’s interests change. CDA responds to the person in the now, not their past behavior. - Better timing and higher receptivity: messages appear only when the user signals readiness to receive them. - True cross-media and cross-seller frequency capping: if someone doesn’t want to see it, they won’t be overexposed. ### What billing model do programmatic campaigns use? Programmatic AdChooser campaigns are billed on a CPM basis and are optimized by Welect towards view-through rate (VTR). ### What campaign duration is recommended for a Choice-Driven Advertising campaign to achieve sufficient reach and completed views for reliable results? Recommendation: approx. 4 weeks. The ideal duration of a Choice-Driven Advertising campaign depends largely on whether — and how — it is embedded in accompanying campaign activities. As a general benchmark, we recommend a duration of 4 weeks. This period ensures that: - enough delivery volume accumulates across different Category Entry Points, placements, and times of day to smooth out outliers and daily fluctuations - a robust sample of completed views is generated, sufficient to also support an accompanying Brand Lift study - there is enough time to identify learnings on the performance of individual CEPs or placements during the live flight and optimize accordingly If the CDA campaign runs in parallel with other campaign activities — such as a TV flight, an out-of-home campaign, or a seasonal launch — it is advisable to align its duration with that broader campaign period, so CDA can unfold its full effect in conjunction with the other channels. ### What data sources does the advertising industry use for targeting – and what are their structural limitations? - Search queries – capture only active information needs. They ignore the 95% of people who aren't yet searching but would be receptive. - Transactions – describe what was purchased in the past, not whether a need has already been met or whether a repurchase cycle is approaching. - Reading behaviour & page content – people consume the vast majority of content without any product relevance. Advertising only in thematically matching contexts misses the audience during most of their daily lives. - Engagement – likes, shares, and reactions measure entertainment value, not purchase intent. - Social graph & profile data – static, often outdated, reflecting self-presentation at registration rather than current mental state. - Location data – reveal presence, not motivation. Being somewhere is no guarantee of receptivity. All of these signals are proxies – approximations of something they cannot directly measure. ### What distinguishes a primary from a secondary data source – and why does it matter for advertising? A primary data source is created for the purpose for which it is used. A secondary data source is created for a different purpose and subsequently repurposed for advertising relevance. All targeting signals in the advertising industry are secondary: search queries exist for navigation, transactions for commerce, reading behaviour for content consumption, engagement for social interaction. None of these data points were generated to answer the question: is this person receptive to this advertising message right now? The signal in the CDA AdChooser has exactly this one purpose. The person actively chooses which message interests them at this moment – at the point of ad delivery, without any detour through historical data. The signal is not a by-product. It is the purpose. ### What does your device share look like? The device share is approx. 65% desktop and 35% mobile. Historically, the share of ad and tracking blockers in mobile traffic was lower than on desktop. However, this is starting to change — among other things due to new developments such as the ad-blocking setup prompt introduced in Samsung Android onboarding, which has caused adoption rates to jump. In addition, a large portion of mobile traffic comes from apps. These often have higher consent rates or only allow use with consent to tracking — which further changes the conditions compared to the open web. ### What happens if the user does not choose a spot? There are two options: either the user can skip the ad after a time defined by the publisher by not making a selection, or the user is prompted to make a selection and watch a campaign. Welect deliberately leaves this decision to publishers and their monetization strategy. Each publisher can decide individually whether an ad can be skipped or whether a selection is required before the content continues. Against the backdrop of the current economic situation in the media industry, most publishers currently opt against a skip option. ### What impact does Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) have? CDA aims for higher receptivity and therefore more attention, better readiness to absorb the message, greater relevance, and stronger impact per contact. This is especially relevant for reach, timing, and brand growth. ### What is the difference between qualified reach and a raw impression? A raw impression is served – regardless of whether anyone watched, clicked away, or left the page. Qualified reach in CDA is pre-validated by the person themselves: they actively chose, watched the spot in full, and thereby signaled that the contact was relevant. This is the planning category between impression and conversion. ### What is Welect's monthly net reach (unique users)? Welect's net reach is generated from the combined inventory of our more than 400 publisher partners. How high the actual unique user reach within the signal loss segment is cannot currently be measured with certainty by any market research institute or cross-media measurement provider – because identifying individual people within signal loss without violating data protection regulations or technical frameworks such as Apple's Privacy Framework is not possible. This is a structural limitation of the entire industry, not just of Welect. What some can measure: contact frequency. Studies conducted together with the research departments of media agencies, publishers, and market research institutes show an average frequency of 1.7 to 2.5 contacts per person. That is structurally low – and not by coincidence. The reason lies in the Choice-Driven Advertising mechanism itself: people who have already seen a campaign – whether via Choice-Driven Advertising or TV, CTV, on platforms or another channel – will not voluntarily choose the same ad again. Budget shifts automatically to new people. Combined with the breadth and quality of Welect’s publisher network – whose combined gross reach covers a large share of the German digital market according to official market data such as b4p and IVW – Welect campaigns achieve maximum net audience coverage. On this basis, Welect reaches up to 80% of the total digital population, without relying on persistent identifiers. ### What is Welect’s maximum reach potential? Welect’s maximum reach potential is 622 million qualified video impressions per month. The basis is a total inventory of 3.7 billion video impressions per month that Welect aggregates through partnerships with publishers, media companies, and marketers. This raw potential is condensed through a multi-step quality filtering process into a high-quality net reach of 305 million impressions — around 8% of the starting inventory. Filter cascade overview: - 50% reduction of auto-plays: only user-initiated sound-on video views - 25% cleanup of overlaps in unique video views - 10% of inventory excluded due to missing ad suitability - 37% elimination of fraud and bot traffic - 5% brand-safety filter - 20% base CPCV-billing-free: billing only for video ads watched 100% to completion The result is a quality reach of 622 million impressions delivered to real people — clean, brand-safe, fraud-free, and user-initiated. For advertisers, this means maximum efficiency because every contact truly counts. ### What share of Welect's total inventory is signal loss traffic? On average, around 50% of Welect's inventory consists of signal loss traffic – people without actionable IDs or data signals, or who use an ad blocker. Depending on the distribution across our publisher sites, we measure shares between 46% and 54%, with the ratios varying on a daily basis. Since we capture per impression whether a session belongs to the signal loss audience, we report this share transparently in every campaign report. ### What should the budget be for a first Choice-Driven Advertising campaign to generate reliable learnings — and over what period should this budget be spread to deliver statistically meaningful results? The ideal budget size depends on the size of the product category — specifically, how many people are potentially reachable through Category Entry Points. 1. Categories with broad reach (e.g. FMCG, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Beauty) Our recommendation: approx. €40,000 over a period of 3 to 4 weeks. These categories have a broad base of relevant CEPs and correspondingly high user interaction with the AdChooser. A budget of this size allows enough delivery volume to gather robust reach and completed-view data across different CEPs, placements, and times of day. 2. Smaller or more niche categories (e.g. niche B2B, specialized D2C brands, smaller country scopes) Our recommendation: approx. €20,000 over a period of 3 to 4 weeks. Here, the addressable audience is smaller, so a lower budget is already sufficient to achieve a representative sample of completed views within the test period. Additional option: Brand Lift measurement If the campaign is to be accompanied by a Brand Lift study, we recommend a total budget of €50,000. This premium ensures that, alongside the actual media investment, the control and exposed group samples are large enough to demonstrate statistically significant differences in ad recall, brand attribution, and brand preference. ### What targeting can I set in the DSP for a programmatic Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) campaign? Since Welect works completely without cookies, identifiers, or signals, it is important that no cookie- or ID-based targeting settings or frequency capping are configured in the DSP. The programmatic deal created by Welect upon request is pre-targeted and already contains the previously specified targeting (e.g., geo or device). Welect recommends setting up the CDA campaign separately in the DSP and booking the Welect format separately. ### What viewability can I expect with Choice-Driven Advertising? With Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA), you can assume effective viewability of 100%. This results from the technical logic of the format and the underlying billing model: CDA is billed on a completed-view basis (CPCV), and the video players are configured to pause playback as soon as the player leaves the visible area due to scrolling or the user switches tabs or browsers. In those cases, the video cannot be played to completion, so the contact is not counted as a success and is not billed to the advertiser. Only deliveries with continuous visibility for the entire duration of the video ad are counted for the booked campaign. The MRC standard defines an impression as viewable if at least 50% of the ad area is visible in the browser viewport for at least two seconds — in short: 50/2. This is the minimum threshold the industry has established as a quality bar, not a quality goal. It says nothing about whether the ad was actually seen, processed, or fully perceived. What makes viewability for all CDA campaigns particularly strong is the first part of the ad contact: the AdChooser. The selection window in which the user actively chooses between multiple advertisers is technically required to be placed 100% in view. Without full visibility there is no user interaction, and without interaction there is no delivery. This applies structurally to all formats delivered in the AdChooser — both CDA Video Ads and Performance Ads. The AdChooser is typically displayed for 10 to 15 seconds — meaning the first part of a CDA campaign (the user’s selection process) already meets a minimum standard of 100/10: 100% of the ad area visible for at least 10 seconds. This exceeds the MRC minimum of 50/2 by a wide margin. ### Which campaign type is selected in the DSP for a programmatic campaign? In the DSP, an AdChooser programmatic campaign is set up as instream video. ### Which criteria can a programmatic pre-targeted deal include? A pre-targeted deal for a programmatic campaign can filter the following criteria: - Geo (for DACH only: postal code, city, state/federal state, country) - Device (desktop/mobile) - Channel/inventory Coordination is handled with sales@welect.de. ### Which important advertiser questions does Choice-Driven Advertising answer and solve? 1. How can advertisers reach the entire market — not just the addressable part? 2. How can advertising be delivered at scale to millions of people at exactly the right time? Interesting especially with regard to recency, purchase cycles, and contact-class optimization. 3. How can the quality of the data used be improved to better reflect the dynamics and individuality of human behavior? ### Which industries are Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) suitable for? CDA can be used across industries. Welect is currently particularly strong in automotive, telco, finance, retail, OTC/healthcare, and travel. ### Which media-planning goals can I achieve with Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA)? CDA is especially suitable for incremental reach, relevance, timing and recency, high attention, lower waste, and better chances of positive brand impact. Typical goals are brand awareness, consideration, and conversion. ### Which programmatic deal types does Welect offer for the Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) format? Welect offers two deal types for the Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) format: Private Marketplaces (PMP) and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG). Private Marketplace (PMP) deals are possible via the following DSPs: - The Trade Desk (via Yieldlab SSP) - Active Agent (via Yieldlab SSP) - Adform (via Adform SSP) - Hawk (directly via Welect SSP) Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals are possible for the following DSPs: - The Trade Desk (via Yieldlab SSP) - Active Agent (via Yieldlab SSP) For Hawk and Adform as DSPs for Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns, the current status is: If a customer wants to book Programmatic Guaranteed via Hawk PG or Adform PG, a short-term test can be set up. The customer can contact sales@welect.de. For both deal types: No cookie-based targeting settings, optimization settings, exclusion criteria, frequency capping, or other restrictions may be configured in the DSP. Welect recommends booking the CDA campaign separately from other instream placements. ### Which providers can I use to track Choice-Driven Advertising campaigns? With all common verification partners such as IAS, DoubleVerify, and AudienceProject, provided this is technically and privacy-wise appropriate. ### Which providers can I use to track Welect campaigns? Depending on the campaign objective, with brand-safety, fraud, viewability, and effectiveness measurement providers. ### Which sites or publishers can be booked programmatically? All of them. ### Why are targeting signals and data from secondary data sources structurally historical – even when collected daily? Data from secondary data sources are not only historically outdated in content – they are also historically outdated by process. Before a signal becomes usable for advertising, it passes through multiple stages: collection, aggregation, modelling, matching with other datasets. Each stage takes time. What arrives as a targeting signal describes the person of yesterday, classified by a model built the day before. On top of this: people are interest nomads. Someone reading about fitness in the morning may be thinking about travel by midday and a new smartphone by evening. Historical data doesn't just describe the past – it frequently describes a different person. CDA generates its signal at the precise moment of ad delivery. What matters is not what the person did an hour ago – but what they are opening themselves to right now. The question "is this person receptive right now?" can only be answered in real time – and only by the person themselves. ### Why do secondary data sources force the bundling of people into cohorts – and how does CDA solve this? Individual behavioural signals are too imprecise to support individual decisions. The industry's answer: aggregation. People are bundled into cohorts, poured into lookalike models, sorted into synthetic audiences. This mechanism is not optional – it is structural. The less precise the signal, the larger the group must be for the model to function. Lookalike algorithms compound the problem: trained to find more of the same, they reproduce the existing customer base rather than expanding it. CDA requires no aggregation. Because the signal is primary and generated in real time, it is individual from the outset: one person, one moment, one decision. CDA is the only system that uses zero-party data in a scalable and de-aggregated way – without bundling, without modelling, without matching. ### Why does a voluntarily chosen ad contact work better than a forced impression? The active choice in the AdChooser activates four behavioral economics mechanisms: the endowment effect, loss aversion, self-perception, and commitment – all triggered before the spot even begins. This creates stronger cognitive processing and deeper memory structures than any forced impression. According to the YouGov/Welect Study 2026: 41% more attention, 42% stronger brand trust, 51% higher acceptance. ### Why is CDA's data signal structurally superior to all other targeting signals and data sources in the advertising industry? Every targeting signal in modern advertising originates as a by-product of other activities – browsing, purchasing, reading behaviour, memberships, social interactions. They are repurposed after the fact for the question of advertising relevance. The problem lies not in their quality but in their nature: they are secondary, historical, and force aggregation. Secondary, because they were created for a different purpose and do not answer the only question that matters for advertising: is this person receptive right now? Historical, because every signal passes through a processing chain – collection, aggregation, modelling, matching with other datasets – before it arrives as a targeting signal. What emerges describes not the person of today, but the person of yesterday. And aggregated, because individual behavioural signals are too imprecise to support individual decisions – the industry responds with cohorts, lookalikes, and synthetic audiences, dressed up as precision. CDA breaks with this paradigm on all three levels simultaneously. The signal is primary: it doesn't emerge as a by-product but exists solely for the purpose of ad delivery. It is real-time: the person signals in the moment of the ad contact that they are receptive right now – no model, no proxy, no delay. And it is de-aggregated: every delivery is the result of an individual decision – one person, one moment, no average value. This is the only case in digital advertising where the data signal does not estimate advertising relevance – it measures it directly. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) stronger than purely contextual targeting without a choice element? The key difference lies in when relevance is created: contextual targeting infers a possible intent from behavior, while Choice Driven Ads make intent itself visible — through an active user decision before the ad runs. Signal basis With contextual targeting, the content environment is used to infer a possible interest: someone reading an article about electric cars might be interested in a charging model. The signal is correlational — it describes what someone is doing, not what they want. With Choice Driven Ads, the user actively chooses an ad message before seeing it. The selection is proof of receptivity — the closest equivalent to a real intent signal in programmatic. User experience & receptivity Contextual targeting embeds advertising into the content flow — regardless of whether the context truly fits. The user has no choice; attention is taken, not invited. Receptivity — the willingness to actually take in a message — is at best coincidental. With Choice Driven Ads, the user decides which message to see. This active decision is the strongest available indicator of receptivity: the user has signaled they are ready to receive the message before the first second of the ad. Timing & recency Contextual targeting approximates the optimal contact moment via algorithms — based on content, behavior, and modeled probabilities. Recency can only be controlled indirectly: current reading behavior is used as a proxy for current relevance, but remains an assumption. With Choice Driven Ads, the user sets the moment. The selection is, by definition, recency-valid — it happens exactly when the user is ready. No model can determine this moment more precisely than the user. Frequency control Contextual targeting limits over-frequency via technical caps — useful, but based on thresholds rather than user preference. With Choice Driven Ads, frequency self-regulates: if someone no longer chooses a message, they no longer see it. This is not a technical limit, but a direct feedback loop. Data quality Contextual targeting relies on modeled relationships — correlational, not causal, and therefore error-prone. With Choice Driven Ads, the signal comes from observable human behavior. Real decisions contain no modeling errors and therefore provide a qualitatively different basis for advertising impact. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising particularly well-suited for automotive companies? No purchase cycle is longer than that of a car. People buy a new vehicle every seven to ten years – which corresponds not to the 95/5 rule but closer to a 99/1 logic: at any given moment, only around 1% of potential buyers are actively in a purchase process. The overwhelming majority are in what's known as the dreaming phase – imagining, comparing, observing, without actively searching. Classic performance targeting addresses exactly this 1% – competing in the most expensive segment: on comparison portals like mobile.de or AutoScout24, all manufacturers simultaneously bid for the same impressions. The 99% in dreaming mode remain structurally unreached – even though this is precisely where brand preference is formed, and where the eventual purchase decision is determined. CDA reverses the principle: it's not the algorithm that decides who receives which message and when – the user chooses themselves, signaling in real time which moment or need is on their mind. Multiple CEPs can run in parallel in the AdChooser: People considering a switch to an electric vehicle select themselves Families who need more space in their car select themselves Commuters looking to reduce their monthly mobility costs select themselves People approaching the end of a leasing contract select themselves No lookalike model, no outdated browsing data – just the dreaming phase in real time. Why automotive companies benefit in particular: The dreaming phase as the impact window. Brand preference isn't formed at the dealership – it's formed in the years before. CDA invests in exactly this window: people who aren't searching yet but are already receptive. Whoever is top-of-mind during the dreaming phase has a structural advantage when the purchase moment arrives. CEP routing for drive type and body style. With a single campaign, a manufacturer can simultaneously address multiple purchase situations: EV-interested buyers, families, frequent drivers, lease expiries. The user self-selects into the right product funnel – no separate segmentation, no complex multi-campaign setup. Category exclusivity instead of a bidding war. In the AdChooser, automotive is presented only once per session. One manufacturer occupies its category exclusively – BMW, Mercedes, and VW are not simultaneously competing for the same impression. Share of voice in signal loss. 35 million people are structurally invisible to classic targeting. In this segment there is no competitive pressure – CDA unlocks exclusive share of voice in the dreaming phase, before the active purchase process even begins. First-party data funnel. Signal loss traffic from the dreaming phase lands qualified on the manufacturer's own website – configurator, test drive booking, dealer search. People who were previously completely invisible become direct first-party contacts for the very first time. Use cases: New customer acquisition in the dreaming phase – before competitors even become relevant, the brand is already mentally anchored. Discovery for new models and drive types – electric vehicles, new body styles, or mobility services become discoverable where people already spend their time – not at the dealership, but in the moment of openness. First-party funnel – anonymous dreaming-phase traffic becomes direct prospects on owned channels, independent of comparison portals and third-party IDs. All use cases can be executed in parallel with a single very simple always-on booking. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising particularly well-suited for banks and financial institutions? Banking products are among the most purchase-cycle-intensive categories of all: people think about accounts, loans, investments, or retirement planning when life changes – not continuously: starting a career, getting a raise, planning to buy property, getting married, starting a family, receiving an inheritance, approaching retirement. Or when external events force the issue: rising interest rates, inflation, news about bank failures, the first bonus they've ever earned themselves. Classic targeting only addresses the active 5% – and competes in the most expensive segment of all. On comparison portals like Check24 and Verivox, all banks simultaneously fight a price war over customers who are already ready to switch, bidding against each other in the AdTech ecosystem for the same impressions. The overwhelming majority of future customers is invisible to this kind of targeting – and will remain so as long as targeting is based on historical data. CDA reverses the principle: it's not the algorithm that decides who receives which message and when – the user chooses themselves, signaling in real time which situation or need is on their mind. Multiple CEPs can run in parallel in the AdChooser: - Career starters looking for their first personal account select themselves - People with concrete plans to buy property select themselves - Savers looking to reinvest their money in response to inflation or shifting interest rates select themselves - Young adults thinking about retirement planning for the first time select themselves No lookalike model, no outdated data points – just the real-time need in the current moment. Why banks benefit in particular: 95% are out-of-market – but reachable. Those who don't want to open a new account or switch banks today will do so tomorrow – triggered by a life moment, not an algorithm. CDA invests in this majority before the competition even becomes relevant. Category exclusivity instead of a bidding war. In the AdChooser, a financial category is presented only once per session. One bank occupies their product category exclusively – neobanks, direct banks, and regional institutions are not simultaneously competing for the same impression. Net reach machine. Someone who already knows a message will not choose it again next time. Budget automatically shifts to new people – no cookie, no technical frequency cap required. First-party data funnel. Signal loss traffic from the 35 million unreachable users lands qualified on the brand's own domain – becoming a direct first-party contact for the very first time, instead of disappearing anonymously into the black boxes of major platforms. Use cases: New customer acquisition outside comparison portals. CDA reaches the moment that leads to a search – before the user even starts comparing. Someone who lands on Check24 first compares conditions. Someone reached via CDA beforehand already arrives with trust. Churn prevention. Neobanks like N26 or Revolut don't win customers through better advertising – they win through presence at the right moment. CDA re-engages existing customers in their everyday digital lives: new products, updated conditions, relevant CEPs – before the competition occupies the moment of switching. Win-back. Former customers visit neither the branch nor the app. On the open web, CDA fills the information vacuum: users actively choose which offer or new development interests them – the strongest psychological trigger for re-engagement. Discovery. Products like ETF savings plans, private retirement provision, or mortgage financing are not actively searched for – they emerge from moments. CDA makes these products discoverable where people already spend their time – not in the moment of decision, but in the moment of receptivity. All use cases can be executed in parallel with a single very simple always-on booking. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising particularly well-suited for FMCG companies? FMCG products are bought regularly – but rarely decided consciously. Reaching for a product on the shelf happens out of habit, not deliberation. The purchase decision isn't made in the supermarket – it's made beforehand, through mental availability activated at the right moment. Whoever is present in the consumer's mind when a Category Entry Point is triggered – BBQ season, a child's birthday, the start of the new school year, a health resolution, having guests over – wins the moment at the shelf. Classic targeting addresses exactly the people who already know and buy the brand – competing in the most expensive segment for the same impressions with the same heavy buyers. At the same time, light buyers and non-buyers remain structurally unreached: according to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, growth potential lies almost exclusively in penetrating new buyers, not in increasing the loyalty of existing ones. Classic targeting works systematically against this principle. CDA reverses the principle: it's not the algorithm that decides who receives which message and when – the consumer chooses themselves, signaling in real time which moment or situation is on their mind. Multiple CEPs can run in parallel in the AdChooser: - People in BBQ season with a specific recipe in mind select themselves - Parents in the run-up to the start of school select themselves - Consumers with a new health or dietary goal select themselves - People preparing for an occasion – a birthday, guests, a celebration – select themselves No lookalike model, no outdated purchase histories – just the CEP in the current life moment. Why FMCG companies benefit in particular: Broad reach branding. FMCG growth comes almost exclusively from penetration: more people need to buy the brand, not the same people more often. CDA is structurally a broad reach branding instrument: it reaches all category buyers regardless of IDs, opens up situational rather than demographic filtering, and continuously shifts budget toward new people. 95% are out-of-market – but reachable. At any given moment, only ~5% of potential buyers are actively thinking about a brand or category. CDA invests in this majority through CEP activation, before the competition even becomes visible at the shelf. Category exclusivity instead of an attention battle. In the AdChooser, a product category is presented only once per session. One brand occupies its category exclusively – competitors are not simultaneously present in the same AdChooser. This is the direct opposite of the shelf, where all brands compete for attention at the same time. Share of voice in signal loss. 35 million people are structurally invisible to classic targeting. CDA unlocks this segment without competitive pressure: whoever is present there has no competitor alongside them. Net reach machine. Someone who already knows a message will not choose it again next time. Budget automatically shifts to new people – structurally toward light buyers and non-buyers who are critical for penetration growth. No cookie, no technical frequency cap required. Psychological impact architecture. The active choice in the AdChooser activates four behavioral economics mechanisms: the endowment effect, loss aversion, self-perception theory, and commitment – all before the ad even begins. This produces stronger cognitive processing and deeper memory structures than any forced impression. Recency through self-determination. The person sets the moment themselves: whoever selects a CEP in the AdChooser signals in real time that they are receptive right now. No historical data point, no probabilistic model replaces this signal. Brand lift. An independent Nielsen Brand Lift Study shows measurable impact on key metrics: +18 percentage points in brand preference, +30 percentage points in ad recall, +39 percentage points in message attribution versus the control group. Zero media waste. Costs are incurred exclusively on the voluntarily chosen completed view – not on the impression. No budget flows into APSO inventory, auto-play viewability contacts, or bot traffic. Structural elimination of wastage. Because every ad contact is created through the person's active choice, budget reaches exclusively people who are receptive in that moment. No algorithm estimates relevance – the person signals it themselves. Ad fraud resistance. Bot farms always give consent, don't use ad blockers, and don't browse in incognito mode. Signal loss traffic consists predominantly of real people – the fraud rate is structurally lower than in ID-addressable inventory. First-party data funnel. Signal loss traffic from the 35 million unreachable users lands qualified on the brand's own domain – recipe pages, product configurators, brand worlds. People who were previously completely invisible become direct first-party contacts for the very first time. New customer acquisition among light buyers and non-buyers. FMCG growth comes almost exclusively from penetration: more people need to buy the brand, not the same people more often. CDA structurally reaches people who were not previously part of the core target group – at the right moment, with the right CEP, through voluntary self-selection. All advantages can be activated in parallel with a single, straightforward always-on booking. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising particularly well-suited for insurances as a category with long purchase cycles? Insurance is one of the most purchase-cycle-intensive categories of all: people think about coverage when life changes – not continuously: life events, perceived threats, financial optimization, compliance, accidents, illness, loss. Classic targeting only addresses the active 5% – and competes in the most expensive segment of all. On comparison portals, all insurers simultaneously fight a price war over customers who are already ready to switch, bidding against each other in the AdTech ecosystem for the same impressions and driving CPMs up. The overwhelming majority of future customers is invisible to this kind of targeting. CDA reverses the principle: it's not the algorithm that decides who receives which message and when – the user chooses themselves, signaling in real time which situation or future need is on their mind. Multiple CEPs can run in parallel in the AdChooser: - Young adults setting up their first home select themselves - Parents after the birth of a child select themselves - Car buyers with new coverage needs select themselves No lookalike model, no outdated data points – just the real-time need in the current moment. Why insurance brands benefit in particular: 95% are out-of-market – but reachable. Those not actively searching today will be ready to switch tomorrow. CDA invests in this majority before the competition even becomes relevant. Category exclusivity instead of a bidding war. In the AdChooser, an insurance category is presented only once per session. One insurer occupies their product category exclusively – competitors are not simultaneously competing for the same impression. Net reach machine. Someone who already knows an ad will not choose it again next time. Budget automatically shifts to new people – no cookie, no technical frequency cap required. First-party data funnel. Signal loss traffic from the 35 million unreachable users lands qualified on the brand's own domain – becoming a direct first-party contact for the very first time. New customer acquisition outside comparison portals. CDA reaches the moment that leads to a search – before the user even starts comparing. Including the 35 million signal loss users who are completely invisible to classic targeting. Churn prevention. Existing customers are re-engaged in their everyday digital lives – with new tariffs, extended coverage, or relevant CEPs – before the competition is already advertising at the point of switching. Win-back. Former customers visit neither the app nor the website. On the open web, CDA fills the information vacuum: users actively choose which new development interests them – the strongest psychological trigger for re-engagement. Discovery. Insurance products people would not actively search for become discoverable where they already spend their time – not in the moment of loss, but in the moment of receptivity. All use cases can be executed in parallel with a single always-on booking. ### Why is continuous presence more effective than burst campaigns? Mental availability is built through repeated presence in relevant situations over time – not through advertising bursts. CDA's always-on logic ensures permanent visibility across the open web, whenever people carry Category Entry Points (CEPs) within them. Every contact strengthens a memory structure that is retrievable at the moment of purchase. ### Why is no targeting required for Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) campaigns? Because the user makes the targeting decision themself. The user signals that they are interested in that moment. ### Why is reach so important for advertisers? Reach is crucial for penetrating a category. 90% of people buy brands they know. High-reach advertising ensures brands become known in the first place. Large brand campaigns must reach millions of people every month for the business to work. The same principle applies to smaller companies that need to reach as many potential customers as possible in order to grow. The internet is effectively split into two spheres: addressable and non-addressable traffic. Online traffic without IDs is not worthless — on the contrary: there is a lot of potential that many market participants still have not recognized. No brand can afford to give up 50% of its potential reach online. Through collaboration with almost all publishers, media companies, and marketers, we offer reach potential and data-signal scale that advertisers otherwise only know from the big platforms — combined with a very simple, standardized bookability. ### Win-Back: How do I reach former customers who are stuck in an information vacuum and unaware of what has changed since they left? Win-back: Former customers in the information vacuum. Former customers visit neither branch, nor app, nor website. What has changed since they left – new products, new solutions, new offers – simply isn't on their radar. The information vacuum works in favor of the competition. Across the open web, the AdChooser fills this vacuum: former customers encounter the brand on the pages they visit every day – and actively choose which topic interests them. The active decision to select a CEP is the strongest psychological trigger for re-entry – because the person is not interrupted, but takes the initiative themselves. ## Signal Loss ### How do I generate incremental reach? By additionally reaching those people who are no longer addressable through classic AdTech logics — the unreachable audiences. Around 50% of traffic is invisible to classic tracking. That’s exactly where Welect comes in. ### How do you target? How do you reach users in signal loss? Not via personal profiles, but via situational relevance at the moment of the media touchpoint. The user signals which message is interesting right now. In addition, it is possible to work with geo and time-of-day targeting. ### How does signal loss happen and what is the definition of signal loss? Up to 50% of online traffic can no longer be tracked, identified, or addressed in the classic way. In Germany, this corresponds to about 35 million people. This is driven by people’s decisions not to be tracked: - Refusing consent under GDPR/ePrivacy - IDFA opt-out on Apple devices - Using ad blockers and tracking blockers - Browsing in privacy/incognito mode This is not an efficiency problem, but a growth problem: 50% of potential customers are invisible to classic tracking. But online traffic without IDs is not worthless — on the contrary: there is a lot of potential that many market participants still haven’t recognized. No brand can afford to forgo 50% of its potential online reach. In the group of people I call the "open book" — those who allow tracking — planners and marketers are overrepresented. Bot-farm operators also give consent and do not use blockers. ### How does signal loss happen on the internet? Signal loss is caused less by legal privacy rules or technical constraints than by people’s decisions not to be tracked: - Refusing consent under GDPR/ePrivacy - IDFA opt-out on Apple devices - Using ad blockers and tracking blockers - Browsing in privacy/incognito mode ### How large is the signal-loss share? The signal-loss share is about 50% of online traffic. The share varies depending on environment, device, browser, country, and publisher. In Germany, this corresponds to about 35 million people. ### How relevant is the topic of signal loss? The SEC 10-K filings published in early 2026 by Alphabet Inc., The Trade Desk, Omnicom Group, Magnite, and PubMatic listed signal loss as a risk and challenge. The question is therefore how to reach enough people in the future. Statements in public-company reports are subject to strict regulatory requirements and must be substantiated accordingly. ### Is the model GDPR-compliant? Yes. The model is designed to work without personal tracking. ### What are the consequences for my media planning if I ignore signal loss? You forgo a significant share of reach and therefore growth potential. As a result, frequency increases among the same addressable users instead of reaching new buyers. Your impression numbers are artificially inflated because the bot share is higher in addressable reach. You can ignore signal loss or complain about it. I recommend treating it as a major opportunity with the help of Choice-Driven Advertising. Because 50% of a brand’s reach is in signal loss. Reaching these people with Choice-Driven Advertising means delivering ads to incremental new reach. ### What are the risks of signal loss? Signal loss comes with several risks: - Loss of reach: 50% of potential customers are not reached (up to 35 million people in Germany) - Growth stagnation: campaigns cannot penetrate the product category - Weaker targeting - Incomplete frequency capping - Bot paradox: in addressable reach, the bot share is higher because bots do not refuse consent and do not use ad blockers ### What is the signal-loss share in a specific region / postal code? Please share the postal code so we can determine the signal-loss share from yesterday for you. ### Why can you deliver campaigns in signal-loss traffic? The answer is the AdChooser. The AdChooser replaces the need to track or identify people, and Choice-Driven Advertising does not require consent in the classic sense. People decide for themselves which ad is relevant to them in that moment. It works in privacy mode, with ad blockers, without IDFA, and without classic consent tracking. The user themself is the data source — not historical tracking data. ### Why does Welect work without cookies or tracking? Because CDA is based on real-time signals, not historical profiles. People’s decisions replace large parts of classic tracking logic. The AdChooser makes it possible to avoid tracking or identifying people. Users decide for themselves which ad is relevant to them in that moment. ## Programmatic ### Which sites does Welect run on? Welect works with large and small publishers, media companies, and marketers. Our portfolio is based on three pillars: large national sites, regional publishers, and all kinds of special-interest sites. On request, we can provide the site list of the sites used. ## Publishing ### Can campaigns marketed/sold by the publisher or the publisher’s own campaigns also be delivered via Welect? Yes, every publisher has the option to run their own campaigns via the AdChooser. Please contact us for more information at publishing@welect.de. ### Can Welect provide me with a reference contact at another publisher? Absolutely. Please contact us at publishing@welect.de. ### Can Welect send me materials/documents? Yes, gladly. Please contact us at publishing@welect.de and we will send you our materials. ### Can you provide a test script or test VAST tag for one of the placements? Absolutely. Please contact us directly at publishing@welect.de. We can provide a temporary test placement. ### Does the publisher’s video player need to support VPAID or be VAST-capable? For the Welect instream placement, the video player must support VPAID and be VAST-capable. For the other placements, the video player is provided by Welect. ### How can I monitor the performance of Welect placements? Do publishers get access to a dashboard? Welect partners get access to our dashboard and can view their performance, KPIs, and revenues 24/7. ### How does Welect reduce bounce rates at barriers like paywalls? Globally, access barriers such as paywalls create friction on publisher sites and often lead to bounce rates above 90%. As a result, publishers lose reach and therefore the potential to convert some of these visitors into paying customers. Welect complements such access barriers in a very user-centric way: instead of giving users the choice to pay or have no access to content, Welect offers an alternative. Users can gain temporary access to the content by watching a freely chosen ad campaign. This allows them to get to know the publisher’s offering and become part of the conversion funnel. In addition, Welect monetizes fly-by traffic that would otherwise primarily bounce at the barrier. Welect reduces friction by designing monetization as a value exchange: content for attention — voluntary and transparent. ### How is Welect able to reduce the ad-block rate? Why / on what basis does Welect reduce the ad-block rate for publishers? Welect first relies on a transparent, user-friendly dialogue: instead of forcing users to disable their ad blocker or denying them access to content, an ad-block dialogue explains that the publisher generates no ad revenue due to the active ad blocker. At the same time, Welect offers a choice: users can disable their ad blocker, or keep it enabled and still access the content by watching a freely chosen ad campaign — which generates revenue for the publisher despite the ad blocker. This fair approach tends to lead, over time, to users disabling their ad blocker for the site or adding the publisher to their whitelist. Ad blockers typically emerge as a reaction to advertising perceived as disruptive and externally controlled. Choice-Driven Advertising flips this logic: the user is given control and decides which ad they want to watch. This reduces the motivation to block ads in general. - The AdChooser is an integral part of the user journey and not a classic interruptive ad format - Users experience advertising as relevant and fair instead of annoying - Willingness to accept advertising increases — which directly results in lower ad-block usage Depending on the publisher environment, Welect can achieve monthly unblocking rates of 25% to 40%. ### How quickly can a Welect placement be implemented? That depends on the product. Our instream placement does not require a technical implementation — only our VAST tag. The other placements can be implemented very easily within a few hours. Our publishing and tech teams support every integration technically, operationally, and from a data-protection perspective. For further questions, please contact us at publishing@welect.de. ### Is it possible to use only the Welect Choice-Driven technology? Yes, it is possible to use only our technology as a white-label solution. Please contact us for more information at publishing@welect.de. ### Is Welect an ad-recovery service? No, Welect is not an ad-recovery service — it goes far beyond that. Ad-recovery solutions aim to make ad slots lost due to ad blockers visible again by technically circumventing ad blockers and continuing to deliver existing ad formats. Welect takes a different approach: instead of bypassing ad blockers, it creates a user-centric dialogue that offers real choice. Users can keep their ad blocker enabled and still consume content by consciously choosing to watch an ad campaign. Welect’s goal is to consider all parties: Publishers need to finance their content, while users who use ad blockers should not be excluded, but convinced to voluntarily disable the ad blocker or add the publisher to a whitelist. This creates: - a sustainable reduction in ad-block usage - higher acceptance of advertising - a fair value exchange: content for attention instead of coercion Ad recovery tries to technically rescue existing logics. Welect changes the logic itself by building understanding for publisher monetization and relying on voluntary, relevant advertising instead of forced delivery. Welect does not necessarily replace ad recovery — it can also be used in parallel to unlock additional potential. ### Question(s) about data processing (DPA/JCA) We do not track personal data and we illustrate the data processing using a customer journey. Signing a DPA (AVV) and/or JCA document is of course possible. ### Where can I find Welect’s privacy policy? You can find it here: https://www.de.welect.de/de/datenschutz/ ### Where can I test a Welect ad-block placement? Please test the ad-block placement here: https://example.welect.de/adblockdialog/index.html ### Where can I test a Welect consent-dialog placement? Please test the consent-dialog placement here: https://example.welect.de/cmpdialog/index.html ### Where can I test a Welect instream placement? Please test the instream placement here: https://example.welect.de/playerinstream/index.html ### Where can I test a Welect paywall placement? Please test the paywall placement here: https://example.welect.de/paywalldialog/index.html ### Which billing models can publishers and media negotiate with Welect? The billing model towards publishers and media depends on the product. CDA placements are billed on a completed-view basis (CPCV) and in exceptional cases — e.g., with programmatic integration — on a CPV basis. For more information, please contact publishing@welect.de. ### Which formats does Welect use for content monetization? For monetization, Welect uses Video Ads and Performance Ads. Welect primarily helps to increase consent rates, reduce ad-block rates, and significantly lower bounce rates at access barriers such as paywalls. This creates medium- and long-term growth in advertising revenue — comparable to a compounding effect — not only via Welect, but across all of the publisher’s monetization tools. In general, the solutions improve user experience by reducing bounce rates, retaining users, and enabling additional revenue for publishers. For more info, contact publishing@welect.de. ### Which products does Welect offer publishers and what problems do they solve? Welect offers monetization solutions for online properties — especially for the growing share of signal-loss traffic. Welect is not only a monetization partner, but primarily helps to increase consent rates, reduce ad-block rates, and significantly lower bounce rates at access barriers such as paywalls. This creates medium- and long-term growth in ad revenue — comparable to a compounding effect — not only via Welect, but across all of the publisher’s monetization tools. In general, the solutions improve user experience by reducing bounce rates, retaining users, and enabling additional revenue for publishers. Please contact us for your individual solution at publishing@welect.de. ### Why is Choice-Driven Advertising the right complement to any pay-or-consent (PUR) model on publisher sites? Classic pay-or-consent (PUR) models are increasingly under pressure because they often put users in front of a binary decision: pay or give consent. This logic is legally vulnerable from a privacy perspective because it can be perceived as coercion to trade privacy for access to content. Choice-Driven Advertising (CDA) complements this model with a third, user-centric alternative: Users can consume content without paying and without giving up their privacy. Instead of being identified and tracked, they actively choose an ad campaign that is relevant to them in that moment. This creates a fair value exchange — content for voluntary attention, without personal-data targeting. This approach has a sustainable effect: If users return to the site regularly, acceptance of the publisher increases. After repeated positive experiences — e.g., through voluntarily watched ad campaigns — users are more likely to later give consent or take out a subscription. For publishers, this results in clear benefits: - Reduced legal risk because a real alternative to “pay or consent” is offered - Higher user acceptance through voluntary interaction instead of coercion - Better monetization of non-payers without privacy conflicts - Long-term conversion paths from anonymous users to consent or subscription CDA expands PUR from a coercion model to a choice model — creating more trust, more reach, and more sustainable revenues. ### Why is it worthwhile for publishers to use Choice-Driven Advertising in the instream video area? A growing share of traffic is without consent, identifiers, or cookies — e.g., due to IDFA opt-out on Apple devices, ad blockers, or incognito usage. Classic and programmatic video monetization can either not monetize this traffic at all or only at very low CPMs. Choice-Driven Advertising monetizes exactly this traffic because user identification is not required. This is particularly beneficial for publishers: Welect is used as an add-on and does not replace existing monetization partners. That way, publishers can monetize the traffic that other systems cannot reach. As a result, publishers monetize their entire reach while advertisers reach more people. Another advantage is organic frequency capping: users rarely choose the same spot multiple times. This leads to less over-frequency, a better distribution of contacts, and more unique users per campaign. In addition, campaigns are based on real intent signals instead of proxy data. Publishers therefore deliver high-quality, voluntary ad contacts — a clear difference versus classic inventory. The result: more successful campaigns and happier advertisers — a key benefit for every publisher.