Native ping-post auction for lead generation. Partners ping with partial data, buyers return bids, winners are selected by your distribution rule, and the full lead is posted to the winner(s). Exclusive, multisell, and hybrid modes all run on the same engine.
Sub-100ms
Ping decision latency
330+
API endpoints
Parallel
Contract evaluation
The Basics
The standard two-call model for real-time lead auction.
Ping-post is a two-call model for distributing leads. The source first pings the platform with partial lead data (enough to qualify, no PII) and gets back buyer bids. If the bids look good, the source then posts the full lead to the winning buyer. The ping runs the auction; the post delivers the lead.
Ping-post is how pay-per-lead operations with multiple competing buyers run. One lead can be evaluated by twenty contracts in parallel, priced by the highest bidder, and sold in a few hundred milliseconds, while the person is still on the form.
The Flow
Six steps from the first ping to payment. Every step is auditable in the waterfall.
Source posts partial lead data to the ping endpoint: state, zip, vertical-specific qualifiers, timestamp. Enough to evaluate fit without exposing PII. The ping carries the campaign posting key so Lead Router knows the offer and the partner.
Lead Router fans out the ping to every active contract on the offer. Each contract runs its filters (geo, demographic, custom), checks caps, checks buyer balance, checks schedule. Dedup runs here too so no buyer bids on a lead they already bought. Typical fan-out completes in under 100ms.
Each qualifying contract returns a bid: price and availability. Contracts with a real-time bidding endpoint get called out to the buyer for custom logic; others use contract pricing. Buyers that do not qualify, are capped, or skip the bid are dropped from the pool.
The offer distribution rule selects winners. Exclusive picks one. Multisell picks the top N by price. Hybrid picks an exclusive if above a price floor, otherwise falls to multisell. Priority, weight, and round-robin are also available when price is not the deciding factor.
Lead Router returns the winning bid(s) with post URLs and pricing. Source decides whether to post. If yes, the full lead (name, phone, email, all custom fields) is posted to the winner. Multisell posts parallel to all winners at once.
Lead Router records a leadSale per winner, updates cap counters atomically, charges the buyer, and pays the partner per the campaign payout. The full waterfall (every contract that was evaluated, what bid it returned, why it lost) is stored in leadDistribution for audit.
Distribution Modes
Every offer sets its own distribution rule. Pick the one that fits the vertical and the buyer mix.
The highest-priced qualifying bid wins. The lead is sold to a single buyer and cannot be sold again on that offer. Used in verticals where buyers pay a premium for exclusivity: final expense, high-intent mortgage, legal. Exclusive pricing is usually two to four times multisell pricing.
The top N bidders (configurable, usually three to five) all win. Full lead posts in parallel to every winner. Used in verticals where buyers expect competition: auto insurance, Medicare, home services. Price per buyer is lower but total revenue per lead is often higher than exclusive.
If any bid clears a configurable price floor, sell exclusive to the top bidder. If no bid clears the floor, fall back to multisell with the top N. Captures exclusive premiums when available without leaving leads unsold when the exclusive bid does not materialize.
Built Different
Four things operators care about when ping-post volume scales past the comfort zone of a spreadsheet.
Every eligible contract runs at the same time, not sequentially. On an offer with twenty to thirty active contracts, the full ping phase completes in under 100ms so the form does not stall.
Cap counters increment atomically when a bid wins. Two parallel pings cannot both push a contract past its daily, weekly, or monthly limit. No oversells, no cleanup scripts, no apologies to buyers.
Buyers do not bid on a lead they already bought, even if the lead came in through a different partner or campaign. Dedup runs inside the ping so capped-out buyers never return a bid that has to be thrown away.
Contracts can point at a buyer RTB URL. Lead Router calls the URL with the ping payload; the buyer returns a custom price (or skips). Used when a buyer wants to bid dynamically on attributes Lead Router does not score natively.
Ping-Post vs Direct Post
Ping-post is not the only model. Use the right one per offer.
Ping-post is for operators with multiple competing buyers on the same offer. The auction exists because more than one buyer wants the lead and price discovery matters. If you run ten buyer contracts on an auto insurance offer, you want ping-post. If you sell the same lead to all of them at the same price, you do not need it.
Direct post is the other model. One buyer, one price, no auction. The partner posts the full lead directly to the buyer endpoint. Used for exclusive deals, in-house routing where the operator is the only buyer, and verticals where the buyer already negotiated the price.
Lead Router supports both on the same platform. Set an offer to ping-post when you have a buyer mix and care about price. Set it to direct post when you do not. Contracts, caps, filters, and dedup work the same in either mode.
Frequently Asked
The questions operators ask before running ping-post volume on a platform.
What is ping-post?
Ping-post is a two-call auction model for lead distribution. The source first sends a ping with partial lead data (state, zip, qualifiers, no PII) and gets back buyer bids. If the bids clear the source’s threshold, the source posts the full lead to the winning buyer(s). The ping runs the auction, the post delivers the lead, and the lead is sold in real time.
How fast is Lead Router's ping-post?
Ping evaluation completes in under 100ms on average. Every eligible contract is evaluated in parallel, including filter matching, cap checks, buyer balance, schedule, and dedup. On a typical offer with ten to thirty active contracts, the source has bids back before the next keystroke on the form.
What's the difference between exclusive, multisell, and hybrid?
Exclusive sells the lead to one winner (highest price). Multisell sells the lead to the top N winners by price (usually three to five). Hybrid tries exclusive first: if any bid clears a price floor, sell exclusive to the top bidder; otherwise fall back to multisell. Each offer sets its own mode.
Can buyers run custom bid logic?
Yes. Every contract can point at a real-time bidding (RTB) endpoint on the buyer side. Lead Router calls the endpoint with the ping payload and the buyer returns a custom price (or skips the bid). Use this when a buyer wants to score attributes Lead Router does not evaluate natively, or when pricing depends on external data.
Does ping-post handle deduplication?
Yes, during the ping phase. Each buyer contract runs its dedup window against prior sales before returning a bid. A buyer that already bought this lead (or a lead from the same consumer within the dedup window) does not bid on it again. Dedup runs cross-partner so the same consumer through a different campaign is still caught.
Run the Auction
Configure contracts, set the distribution rule, point your partners at the ping endpoint. Sub-100ms auctions, atomic caps, cross-partner dedup. Exclusive, multisell, or hybrid on the same platform.
No credit card required. All features included from day one.