Best Price
Best Price distribution in Lead Distro AI: on a ping-post campaign every eligible buyer bids on the lead and the highest bid wins. How the auction ranks bids, how the lead is priced, and how it differs from the ladder methods.
What is Best Price?
Best Price sells each lead to the highest bidder. Instead of walking a ladder, Lead Distro AI asks every eligible buyer what they will pay for this specific lead, and the biggest number wins.
It is not a method you select from the Distribution Method list. It is what a campaign does automatically when its routing method is Ping-Post, because a bid answers the who-gets-it question better than any pre-set order could. That is why a ping-post campaign shows a Best Price pill where the distribution selector would otherwise be.
Setting up ping-post itself, including required ping fields, margin, and buyer endpoints, is covered in the Ping-Post Guide. This page is only about how the winner is chosen and priced.
How the winner is picked
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Eligibility | The usual gates run first: caps, filters, schedules, suppression, wallet. Only survivors are asked to bid. |
| 2. Ping | Every eligible buyer receives the ping fields, which are the qualifying, non-identifying parts of the lead. |
| 3. Bids come back | Each buyer answers yes with a price, or no. Non-answers and timeouts are treated as no. |
| 4. Sort | Bids are ranked highest first. If two bids are exactly equal, the lower priority number wins the tie. |
| 5. Post | The winner receives the full lead and is billed their bid. |
Share is not used at all under Best Price, and priority is only a tiebreaker between two identical bids. A buyer on tier P9 that bids $80 beats a buyer on tier P1 that bids $75.
Worked example: one lead, four buyers
| Buyer | Tier | Answer | Bid | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Legal | P1 | Accepted the ping | $62 | Second place |
| Bright Path | P2 | Accepted the ping | $71 | Wins, billed $71 |
| Overflow Partners | P1 | Declined the ping | Out | |
| Slow Co | P3 | No response before the timeout | Out, treated as a decline |
Bright Path wins on price even though Acme sits on a better tier. If both had bid $71, Acme would have won on the tie because P1 beats P2.
When to use it
- Your buyers price per lead, not per contract. Their bid changes with the state, the time of day, or how the lead answered your form.
- You run a competitive vertical where several buyers want the same lead and are willing to outbid each other for it.
- You want the market to set the price rather than negotiating a flat rate per buyer.
- You buy from suppliers on a ping-post basis and need a real price to quote them back in real time.
How Best Price compares to the ladder methods
| Best Price | Priority (Waterfall) | Weighted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winner decided by | The highest bid on this lead | Rank order set in advance | A random draw by share |
| Price of the lead | The winning bid, which changes per lead | The buyer's fixed price | The buyer's fixed price |
| Priority is | A tiebreaker only | The whole mechanism | A hard tier gate |
| Share is | Not used | Not used | The mechanism |
| Volume predictability | Low, whoever bids most wins | High, top buyer first | High, the split holds |
| Revenue per lead | Usually the highest | High, if ranked by price | Depends on the split |
What it costs you
An auction optimizes revenue per lead and gives up predictability of volume. A buyer that wants a steady 20 leads a day cannot be promised that under Best Price, because their volume depends on how aggressively everyone else bids that day.
If you need both, run two campaigns: one ping-post campaign for the buyers who bid, and one Direct Post campaign on a pacing method such as Weighted (Fair Share) for the buyers who committed to a daily number.
The calls version: RTB
Pay-per-call campaigns have the same idea under a different name. RTB asks every eligible target for a bid on the inbound call and rings the highest bidder first. The rules match Best Price exactly: highest bid wins, priority only breaks ties, weight is ignored. See RTB for calls.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I select Best Price from the Distribution Method dropdown?
Does priority matter at all?
What if nobody bids?
Can one lead be sold to more than one bidder?
Do caps and filters still apply?
Related Articles
If you have any questions, send us an email at support@leaddistro.ai