Stop paying twice for the same consumer. Buyer-level dedup, cross-partner vertical dedup, and contract-level overrides. Email and phone hashed with SHA-256, dedup runs during the ping phase, every hit logged in the leadDedup table.
Buyer-Level
Per-contract check
Cross-Partner
Same vertical, any partner
SHA-256 Hashed
Email and phone identifiers
The Basics
The check that stops the same consumer from being sold twice to the same buyer.
Lead deduplication is the gate that prevents the same person from being sold twice to the same buyer inside a configurable window. When a lead comes in, the platform hashes the email and phone, looks up prior sales by those hashes in the leadDedup table, and blocks the new sale if there is a match inside the contract dedup window.
Dedup matters because buyers do not want to pay twice for the same consumer, and consumers do not want to be hammered by five buyers on the same offer just because they filled out two forms. Dedup is how operators keep buyer economics honest and how they keep consumers from getting spammed.
Capabilities
Six capabilities that cover buyer-level, cross-partner, and post-delivery dedup.
Every contract runs a dedup window against prior sales to the same buyer. A buyer that already bought this consumer inside the window does not bid on the ping. Windows are configurable from 1 to 365 days per contract. Short for high-volume verticals, long for high-cost verticals where the buyer is paying for a long sales cycle.
The same consumer submitted through partner A and partner B on the same vertical is caught before the per-buyer check runs. Vertical-level dedup is how operators stop the same consumer from double-selling to the same buyer just because the lead arrived through two different campaigns on the same offer set.
Not every buyer wants dedup. Some buyers running remarketing or nurture flows want every touch, not just the first. Contracts can disable dedup per contract so the offer keeps running for buyers that want the repeat while still enforcing dedup for buyers that do not.
Email and phone are hashed with SHA-256 before they hit the leadDedup table. Dedup lookups run on the hash, not the plaintext. The dedup index never stores raw PII, which keeps dedup compatible with GDPR right-to-erasure and with HIPAA minimum-necessary data rules.
Dedup evaluates on the ping, before bids are returned. A capped-out or already-bought buyer never returns a bid that the winner selector has to throw away. Running dedup on the ping keeps the auction clean and keeps average ping decision latency under 100ms even on offers with twenty to thirty active contracts.
Every dedup hit is recorded in the leadDedup table: which lead, which buyer, which contract, which hash matched, when the prior sale happened. The audit log is queryable per buyer, per partner, and per vertical so operators can see exactly how many leads dedup blocked and why.
The Order
Six checkpoints run in a fixed order from first lead touch to post-delivery outcome.
Before anything else, the lead is checked against the global suppression list. Opt-outs, Do Not Contact entries, and compliance suppressions drop the lead here. Suppression runs first because nothing downstream matters if the consumer has opted out.
Next, the platform checks whether this consumer was already submitted on the same vertical through any partner inside the vertical dedup window. A match here stops the lead from running the auction at all, so the same consumer is not double-ingested just because two partners sent it.
Inside a single ping, if multiple bids would resolve to the same buyer, the platform dedupes across those bids so the same buyer never gets two copies of the same lead in one auction. This matters for multisell where buyer mix overlaps across contracts.
Each contract runs its own dedup window against prior sales to that specific buyer. Hashes are matched on email OR phone. A match drops the contract from the auction. This is the main per-buyer check and is the one operators most often tune per contract.
Disqualification contracts run a separate dedup check in their own table. A lead that was previously disqualified by a buyer is not sent back to that buyer for another disqualification check inside the DQ window. DQ dedup keeps DQ volume honest and keeps buyer costs predictable.
After the lead posts, if the buyer endpoint returns a duplicate response, Lead Router records the outcome and rolls the sale back. Duplicate responses after delivery update the leadDedup record so the next ping from the same consumer will skip that buyer automatically.
When to Use It
Dedup is not always the right answer. Operator judgment per offer and per buyer.
Exclusive sales almost always want dedup on. Exclusive buyers pay a premium because they are the only one getting the lead. Selling the same consumer twice to the same exclusive buyer inside a reasonable window breaks the exclusivity promise and invites refund requests. 180 to 365 day windows are common on exclusive offers for final expense, mortgage, and legal.
Ping-post and multisell sometimes want dedup off. If the same consumer legitimately came in through two different channels (partner A sent a radio lead, partner B sent a web form) and both are inside the buyer dedup window, blocking the second sale leaves revenue on the table. Contract overrides let operators skip dedup on specific contracts where the buyer has opted into repeat contacts.
The platform default is dedup on, with short windows (30 to 60 days) for high-volume verticals and long windows (180 to 365 days) for high-cost verticals. Operators can override per contract. Dedup and GDPR right-to-erasure use the same hashed identifier, so an erasure request wipes dedup state for that consumer in one action without touching plaintext PII.
Frequently Asked
The questions operators ask before turning dedup on or off on a live offer.
What is lead deduplication?
Lead deduplication is the check that prevents the same person from being sold twice to the same buyer inside a configurable window. When a lead comes in, the platform hashes the email and phone, looks up prior sales by that hash, and blocks the new sale if a match is inside the window. Dedup is how operators keep buyers from paying twice for the same consumer and how they keep the same consumer from being hammered by every buyer on the same offer.
How does Lead Router dedup leads?
Lead Router hashes email and phone with SHA-256 and stores the hashes in the leadDedup table. Every contract evaluates the hash against prior sales to the same buyer inside the dedup window configured on that contract. If either the email hash or the phone hash matches, the contract skips the bid. Plaintext email and phone are never used for dedup lookups.
Can I configure the dedup window?
Yes. Every contract sets its own dedup window from 1 to 365 days. Short windows (30 to 60 days) are common for high-volume verticals like auto insurance. Long windows (180 to 365 days) are common for high-cost verticals like final expense or mortgage where buyers do not want to re-buy the same lead for a full cycle. Some contracts skip dedup entirely via a contract-level override.
Does dedup run on the ping or post?
Dedup runs during the ping phase. A buyer that already bought this consumer inside the dedup window does not return a bid on the ping, which means the winner selection never has to throw away bids that would be blocked at post time. Running dedup on the ping keeps capped-out buyers out of the auction and keeps average ping latency under 100ms.
What about cross-partner duplicates?
Cross-partner dedup runs at the vertical level. The same consumer submitted through partner A and partner B on the same vertical is caught by the vertical-level dedup check before the per-buyer check runs. Cross-partner dedup is how operators stop the same consumer from being sold to the same buyer twice just because the lead arrived through two different campaigns.
Stop Double-Selling
Buyer-level and cross-partner dedup. Configurable windows from 1 to 365 days. SHA-256 hashed identifiers, full audit log, contract-level overrides. Plays nicely with GDPR and CCPA right-to-erasure workflows.
No credit card required. All features included from day one.