Advertising Information & Sponsored Public Wi-Fi
How advertising funds zero-cost public connectivity across participating South African venues—and how user choice, privacy controls, and editorial independence work on our platform.
1. Why Advertising Appears During Wi-Fi Activation
Deploying and maintaining carrier-grade fibre backhaul, enterprise Wi-Fi access points, backup power, and 24/7 network monitoring across busy South African shopping centres, commuter hubs, and public venues carries substantial ongoing infrastructure costs.
Rather than charging visitors airtime fees, selling data vouchers, or requiring paid subscriptions, Think Digital X (Pty) Ltd partners with brands and programmatic advertising networks (including Google Ad Manager) so visitors can connect free of charge.
2. Clear Upfront Disclosure & Rewarded Opt-In Choice
In accordance with Google Ad Manager’s Policies for ad units that offer rewards, our Wi-Fi onboarding screens follow strict transparency rules:
- Upfront bundle disclosure: Before starting a session, the connection screen clearly states how many short sponsored messages are required to unlock a 30-minute pass (or an optional +20-minute upgrade to 50 minutes).
- Voluntary opt-in & “No thanks” choice: Viewing a rewarded video is always an active user choice. Selecting “No thanks” lets you decline the sponsored video (forfeiting the complimentary Wi-Fi session) and continue reading our public consumer guides without watching an ad.
- No penalty on optional upgrades: Once you have earned a 30-minute pass, declining the optional 50-minute bonus upgrade never cancels or penalises your already-earned 30-minute connection.
- Graceful handling when no sponsor is available: If no eligible video or sponsor campaign is available for your location, our connection step lets you proceed without forcing artificial errors.
3. Clear Ad Labelling & Editorial Independence
All display banners and sponsored placements across both our Wi-Fi portal screens and ThinkWiFi Pulse consumer guides are clearly labelled (`ADVERTISEMENT` or `Sponsored`) and separated from navigation buttons with safe touch margins. Sponsors never influence our editorial guides—read our Editorial Policy for full details.
4. Managing Ad Personalisation & Device Identifiers
You can review how cookies and privacy-preserving salted/random identifiers are used for frequency capping—and opt out of personalised advertising in one click at any time—on our Privacy & Cookie Controls page.