Ping Post Exchange

Lead Prosper's Ping Post Exchange

A Ping Post Exchange campaign is Lead Prosper’s real-time auction-style bridge between lead suppliers and buyers. When a supplier initiates a “PING” (a lightweight lead inquiry that contains no Personal Identifiable Information, or PII), Lead Prosper immediately forwards that to campaign-specific buyers to gather bids. For Exclusive Leads, the platform then returns the highest bid—adjusted for predefined margins or buyer-specific overrides - to the supplier. In contrast, Shared Leads allow suppliers to see and select among multiple buyer bids. Once the supplier chooses to proceed, they “POST” the full lead details along with the provided lp_ping_id (and bid_id for shared leads), and Lead Prosper delivers the lead to the selected buyer(s).

How Does A Ping Post Exchange Work?

The Ping Post Exchange allows a Lead Prosper user to act as an intermediary between their clients who are lead suppliers and lead buyers.

1. Lead supplier(s) will ping Lead Prosper.
2. Lead Prosper will ping the lead buyer(s) associated with that campaign to get their bids or use dynamic price rules if they are defined.
3. Exclusive Lead: Lead Prosper will return a bid to your lead supplier based on the highest bid received from the lead buyer(s), minus a margin predefined by the Lead Prosper user in the campaign setup.
4. Shared Lead: Lead Prosper will return all the bids from each buyer. The lead supplier can choose which bid(s) they want to sell the lead for.
5. If the lead supplier wants to sell the lead, they can then post the full lead information with the ping_id supplied in the ping response as well as the bid_id(s) if it’s a Shared Lead and Lead Prosper will deliver the lead to the lead buyer(s).

Exclusive Leads - How The Bidding Process Works

How the bidding process works to determine the highest bidder in a Ping Post Exchange for an Exclusive Lead:

1. When a ping comes in from a lead supplier, Lead Prosper will then ping the lead buyer(s) associated with that campaign.
2. Lead Prosper will gather all the bids the lead buyer(s) return from the pings sent out.
3. Once all bids are collected, the Global Margin will be applied, and if a Margin Override for a specific buyer is turned on, that margin will be applied instead.
4. A Bid Penalty is another option allowed for specific buyers. If this is set up for a specific buyer, the penalty will be applied as well.
5. After both the margin and penalties are applied to each lead buyer(s) bid, Lead Prosper will prioritize those bids from highest to lowest, giving the Lead Prosper user the chance for the highest margin with the least chance of a return (based on the optional applied Bid Penalty).

Example:

As you can see in the bidding example above, Buyer 6 has the highest  Bid After Margin (BAM) + Penalty applied, thus winning the highest bid. The Bid After Margin of $48.75 will be sent back to the lead supplier. If the lead supplier decides to sell the lead, the Lead Prosper user will purchase the lead for $48.75 and it will be sold to Buyer 6 for the raw bid of $75.00, earning the Lead Prosper user a margin of $26.25.

When selling Exclusive Leads on the Ping Post Exchange, please keep in mind that if the buyer who won the bid rejects the lead on the POST, it cannot automatically go to the next highest bidder. This is because:

• The supplier has already accepted the winning bid price returned on the PING.
• The lp_ping_id tied to that PING can only be used once—after the POST attempt, it expires.
• The supplier expects to be paid based on the winning bid, not a lower fallback bid.

Example:

• Buyer A bids $20, Buyer B bids $10.
• The supplier is shown the $20 bid and sends the POST.
• Buyer A rejects the POST.
• If the system tried to sell to Buyer B at $10, you’d still owe the supplier $20—creating a loss.

By default, the system simply rejects the lead.

However, Lead Prosper offers a unique option - the "Try all buyers until bid-breakeven point". With this feature you can attempt to resell the exclusive lead to additional buyers in the exchange until it either sells or hits your break-even point. If it doesn’t sell before then, the lead is rejected and returned to the supplier.

"Try all buyers until bid-breakeven point” (Exclusive Leads only)

Turning this feature on will attempt to sell the lead up to a breakeven point.

1. Sometimes when posting the full lead to the highest bid, the lead buyer can still fail the lead (validation, dupe checks, other various reasons...).
2. This option will allow you to try the next highest bid based on the BAM + Penalty being applied (see the diagram chart below), as long as the Raw Bid is still greater than or equal to the original Bid After Margin that was originally supplied to your Lead Supplier.
3. This allows the Lead Prosper user to still sell the lead to another lead buyer without a revenue loss to the Lead Prosper user.
4. In the example below, the original winning bid is Buyer 6. If the lead fails to sell to Buyer 6, the next eligible buyer would be Buyer 3. Buyer 3 is next because their Raw Bid is greater than or equal to the original Bid After Margin ($50.00 >= $48.75) sent back to the lead supplier. Buyer 3’s BAM + Penalty is the second position based on descending order.

5. If for some reason the lead fails to Buyer 3, there are two more eligible buyers based on the Raw Bid(s). Buyer 5 has the next best BAM + Penalty and a Raw Bid of $55.00 which is >= $48.75, the original Bid After Margin, sent to the lead supplier and making them the next eligible buyer.

6. Buyer 1 would up last with the fourth-best BAM + Penalty and a Raw Bid of $50 which is >= $48.75, the original Bid After Margin, sent to the lead supplier.

7. If the lead fails to Buyer 1, we’re out of bids with a breakeven point of $48.75 and Lead Prosper would return an “ERROR” response back to the lead supplier saying the lead was rejected (example below).

Selling a Shared Lead on the Ping Post Exchange

1. A Shared Lead on the Ping Post Exchange allows your lead supplier(s) to sell their lead to multiple lead buyers.
2. Lead supplier(s) will receive an API response that includes all the potential bids (seen below):
3. Lead supplier(s) will be able to choose which bid_id(s) they want to sell the lead for by passing through each bid_id as comma-separated-values under the lp_bids parameter when posting the full lead. Note: if there are multiple bids and the lead supplier does not define lp_bids, Lead Prosper will attempt to sell the lead to all lead buyer(s) with an eligible bid.
4. Below you can see three bids were returned in this example ping response: