Comparison
Wellput vs Paved
Paved and Wellput both connect brands with newsletter audiences, but they work in almost opposite ways. Paved is a self-serve marketplace where you browse listings and book placements yourself at rates publishers set. Wellput is a managed service that plans, places, and optimizes the campaign for you, and prices on a dynamic CPC so you pay for clicks rather than a fixed slot.
How Paved works
Paved is a self-serve marketplace, owned since March 2025 by Redbrick, a British Columbia software rollup. It runs two separate products. The Marketplace is a directory of newsletters that have listed sponsorship inventory. You filter by category and audience size, see each publisher's rate, and book directly, while Paved handles invoicing, insertion orders, and payouts and takes a commission from the publisher, 30 percent on the Marketplace and 40 percent on the Ad Network. There is no subscription for advertisers, but Paved is not free: publishers build that commission into their listed rates, so the platform's cost is carried in the price you pay, and a booking generally runs higher than a direct deal with the same newsletter. On the Marketplace you pay a flat sponsorship fee set by the publisher, the same whether the placement earns one click or a thousand. Its Ad Network is a different product: programmatic, image-based display ads that fill unused ad slots across participating newsletters, billed on a cost per click you set rather than as sponsored content. Publishers need a minimum audience size to list, and on the Marketplace you run the selection, negotiation, and scheduling yourself.
How Wellput is different
Wellput does the work Paved leaves to you. You share your goals, audience, and landing pages, and Wellput builds the campaign, places it across matched premium and niche newsletters, and manages the operational side end to end. The pricing model is the other big difference. Instead of a publisher's fixed rate or a click price you set and hope is right, Wellput runs on dynamic CPC, where the rate follows how each placement actually performs and your budget shifts toward the audiences that convert. For a launch or a moment, Flight tests wide across audiences. For an ongoing program, Recurring starts in a Discovery phase and moves into an Optimized one as the data comes in.
Tracking and measurement
Paved is not a black box here. It reports the clicks a placement drives and, with its pixel, the conversions that follow, and it integrates with tools like Google Tag Manager, Segment, and Mixpanel. The difference is what the optimization runs on. Paved reads results from conversions, which have to accumulate before the numbers mean anything, so on a niche or lower-traffic placement you are waiting on volume to tell what worked. Wellput instruments the upper and middle-funnel events on your landing page, the steps a reader takes before converting, so it has enough signal to start optimizing early instead of waiting for conversion data to add up. And on the Marketplace, Paved leaves the acting to you: you read the reports and decide what to rebook. Wellput folds that signal into a managed loop where dynamic CPC moves budget toward what is working.
| Paved | Wellput | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Self-serve marketplace, plus a separate programmatic ad network | Managed service, planned and run for you |
| Inventory | Large directory of listed newsletters you browse | A curated set Wellput tests across and concentrates spend in |
| Ad format | Sponsored placements on the marketplace; image display ads on the ad network | Native newsletter sponsorships |
| Pricing | Flat fee set by the publisher on the marketplace; a CPC you set on the ad network | Dynamic CPC that adjusts to performance |
| Who runs it | You select, negotiate, and schedule | Wellput places, optimizes, and reports |
| Optimization signal | Waits on lower-funnel conversion volume to accumulate | Landing-page funnel events, so optimization starts sooner |
| Optimization | Self-serve: you read the reports and rebook | Managed loop: dynamic CPC reallocates spend toward what converts |
| Best for | Hands-on buyers who want a self-serve tool and full control | Brands who want the program managed and priced on results |
Who each is for
Choose Paved if
You want a self-serve tool and full control over every placement, and you have time to browse, negotiate, and manage each booking yourself.
Choose Wellput if
You would rather hand the campaign to a team, price on performance instead of fixed rates, and concentrate spend in the audiences that actually convert.