Ping-Post Software: Real-Time Lead Auction and Distribution
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.
Real-Time
Ping evaluation
600+
API endpoints
Parallel
Contract evaluation
The Basics
What ping-post is
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; contact fields are optional, so typically 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.
The ping checks buyer interest before you send the full lead. The post completes the sale and delivery steps. Response time depends on the buyer systems and timeout settings.
The Flow
How Lead Router's ping-post works
Six steps from the first ping to payment. Every step is auditable in the waterfall.
Partner sends the ping
The source sends lead data to the ping endpoint: state, zip, qualifiers for the vertical, and a timestamp. The ping is usually partial. Contact fields (name, email, phone) are optional, so you can check fit before you hand over personal details. The ping carries the partner posting key. Each partner has one active key, shared across that partner’s campaigns. The body also holds the campaignId, so Lead Router knows the offer and the partner.
Every buyer contract evaluates in parallel
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. The fan-out runs every contract in parallel, so the engine is never the bottleneck.
Buyers return bids
Each qualifying contract returns a bid: price and availability. Contracts with a real-time bidding endpoint ask the buyer's system for a price; others use the contract price. Buyers that do not qualify, are capped, or skip the bid are dropped from the pool.
Lead Router picks the winner
The offer sets how many buyers can win. Exclusive selects one, multisell can select several, and hybrid uses the buyer limit you set. Choose from eight ranking rules: price, priority, weighted, round robin, quality tier, scarcity-weighted, revenue-per-lead, and weighted revenue-per-lead.
Partner posts the full lead
Lead Router returns a pingId, an expiry, a match count, and the ranked matches with their prices. The source decides whether to post. If yes, the full lead (name, phone, email, all custom fields) goes to /api/v1/leads/post with that pingId. Lead Router holds the winners against it and handles delivery. Multisell delivers to all winners at once.
Sale recorded, payment handled
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
Three ways to run the auction
Every offer sets its own distribution rule. Pick the one that fits the vertical and the buyer mix.
Exclusive
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.
Multisell
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.
Hybrid
Hybrid sends the lead to up to the number of buyers set on the offer. Each winner is a distinct buyer. The offer ranking rule decides which buyers come first.
How the auction works
What makes Lead Router's ping-post different
Four things operators care about once ping-post volume grows past what a spreadsheet can track.
Parallel contract evaluation
Every eligible contract runs at the same time, not sequentially. On an offer with twenty to thirty active contracts, the engine's own evaluation is never the bottleneck; total ping time is dominated by your buyers' endpoints.
Caps enforced from ping through sale
The ping checks remaining capacity, so a contract that is already full never returns a bid. The counters themselves increment atomically at the sale, on the post. That is what keeps two parallel posts from both pushing a contract past its hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly limit, so buyers are not oversold and nobody has to clean up afterward.
Cross-partner deduplication during ping
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 a buyer who already bought the lead never returns a bid that has to be thrown away.
Real-time bidding endpoints per buyer
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
When to run an auction, when to just 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.
Make a bid useful to the rest of the workflow
A bid is one step in the buyer's delivery agreement.
Evaluate eligible demand
Buyer funding, filters, caps, and deduplication still decide who can take part. The offer’s distribution strategy picks among the eligible candidates; ranking does not waive a contract requirement.
Test the integration
Administrators can use visual response mapping, sample responses and Test Ping or Test Delivery tools before sending real traffic. Keep the buyer’s returned identifier available for later disposition and chained-delivery workflows.
Frequently Asked
FAQ
The questions operators ask before running ping-post volume on a platform.
What is ping-post?
Ping-post is a two-step auction for selling leads. First, the source sends a ping with partial lead data: state, zip, and qualifiers. Contact fields are optional, so the ping usually carries no personal details (PII). Buyers send back bids. If the bids meet the source’s minimum price, the source posts the full lead to the winning buyer or buyers. The ping runs the auction. The post delivers the lead. The sale happens in real time.
How fast is Lead Router's ping-post?
Lead Router checks eligible contracts at the same time. It checks filters, caps, funds, schedules, and duplicate leads. Total ping time depends on how soon buyer systems respond and their timeout settings.
What's the difference between exclusive, multisell, and hybrid?
Exclusive selects one buyer. Multisell can select several buyers. Hybrid selects up to the buyer limit set on the offer. Each mode uses the offer ranking rule. Hybrid does not switch modes based on a price floor.
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
Put your ping-post on one engine
Configure contracts, set the distribution rule, point your partners at the ping endpoint. Real-time auctions, atomic caps, cross-partner dedup. Exclusive, multisell, or hybrid on the same platform.
Every module included at no extra license fee.