Buyer Pricing Explained - Understanding Static, Conditional, and Real-Time Dynamic Pricing

When setting up a buyer in Lead Prosper, you have three options for configuring how leads are priced: Static Pricing, Conditional Pricing, and Real-Time Pricing. Each option serves a different use case depending on whether your pricing is fixed, varies based on lead data, or is determined dynamically by the buyer's API response. This article covers how each pricing type works, when to use it, and what to keep in mind during setup.

Static Pricing

Static Pricing sets a fixed price for all leads sold to a buyer. Every lead that is delivered to that buyer will be recorded at the same dollar amount, regardless of the lead's data.

This option is primarily used with Direct Post buyers and is the simplest pricing configuration available.

Conditional Pricing

Conditional Pricing is used when a single buyer has multiple price points based on different data values within a lead. This is common when a buyer pays different rates depending on geography, lead type, or other field-level criteria.

Example: A buyer pays a flat rate of $15 for most leads, but pays $20 for leads where the state is NY and $25 for leads where the state is CT. With Conditional Pricing, you set the default price to $15, then add rules that adjust the price to $20 when state = NY and to $25 when state = CT.

How Conditional Pricing Rules Work

You can add as many Conditional Pricing rules as needed. Rules are evaluated in sequential order from top to bottom. Because of this, you should make sure your rules do not conflict with each other. If a rule near the top of the list sets the price to one value, a rule further down could override it with a different value.

When setting a Conditional Pricing rule, you can define the price in two ways:

Set it to a fixed amount.
Set it to a value pulled from a specific campaign field on the lead.

Condition Matching

Each rule can be configured to trigger when ALL of the conditions are met, or when ANY of the conditions are met.

Conditions can be based on:

A specific campaign field value
Day / Time
A Supplier

Campaign Field Operators

When building a condition based on a campaign field value, you select the campaign field, the operator, and the value. The available operators depend on the field type.

Standard Campaign Field Operators:

Equal
Not Equal
One Of
Exclude
Contains
Is Blank
Is Not Blank

Day / Time and Numeric Field Operators:

Equal
Not Equal
Greater Than
Greater Than or Equal To
Less Than
Less Than or Equal To
Between
One Of
Exclude
Is Blank
Is Not Blank

Value Selection

The value input will vary depending on the campaign field type and operator you select:

List of Allowed Values field — You can select one or multiple values from that field's allowed value list.
Date field — A date picker is provided for selecting the date(s).
Text, Number, or other field types — You can enter a single value or multiple values depending on the operator you selected.

Real-Time Dynamic Pricing

Real-Time Pricing is used when the buyer returns a price in their API response, and you want the system to set the lead's sell price dynamically based on that returned value. This can be configured on both Direct Post and Ping Post buyers, but there are important restrictions depending on campaign type and distribution method.

Direct Post Buyers in a Direct Post Campaign

For a Direct Post buyer inside a Direct Post campaign, Real-Time Pricing is only available when the campaign's Distribution Method is set to one of the following:

Waterfall
Round Robin
Weighted Round Robin
Buyer Groups

If the Distribution Method is Buyer Groups, the buyer must be inside a buyer group that is set to Waterfall, Round Robin, or Send to All. If the buyer group is set to Highest Bidder, that buyer's bid price for the Highest Bidder process will default to $0.

Real-Time Pricing is not available when the Distribution Method is set to Highest Bidder. Highest Bidder logic requires a bid price before the POST is sent in order to rank buyers. Since Real-Time Pricing determines the price from the POST response, the system would not have a bid price at the time of ranking and would default the buyer's bid to $0, placing them last in the bidding order. For this reason, Real-Time Pricing on the POST is not supported for Direct Post buyers in a Direct Post campaign with Highest Bidder distribution.

Ping Post Buyers

When using Real-Time Pricing with a Ping Post buyer, the price is determined from the PING response. The value returned in the PING response becomes the buyer's "bid price." This bid price is used in any Highest Bidder distribution logic. If the buyer is then sent the POST and accepts the lead (i.e., the lead is sold to them), the bid price from the PING response is the price the lead is recorded as being sold for.

Using the Response Parser Tool

When setting up Real-Time Pricing, it is highly recommended that you use the Response Parser Tool to verify that the response mapping for the real-time price value is correct. If the mapping is incorrect, the system will return an error indicating that a bid price for that buyer could not be determined, and the lead will fail to that buyer.

If you have questions about which pricing option is right for your setup, or need help configuring pricing rules for a specific buyer, reach out to the Lead Prosper support team. We're here to help you get everything dialed in.