How Pay-Per-Call Works

Pay-per-call is an advertising model where a business pays for each qualified phone call from an interested customer, instead of paying for each click. TrackDrive is call tracking and lead-to-call automation for performance marketers. This article explains who is involved, follows an inbound call and a web lead from start to finish, and defines the words you will meet across the Help Center.

Who Is Involved

• Traffic sources are the affiliates, publishers and ad channels that produce calls and leads. They are the supply side, and they earn a payout. See the "Traffic Sources Overview" article.
• Buyers are the call centers and businesses that receive the calls and pay for them. They are the demand side, and what they pay is revenue. See the "Buyer Overview and Types" article.
• TrackDrive sits between them. It records where each call came from, decides in real time which buyer, if any, gets it, checks whether the call converted, records the revenue and payout, and can report conversions back to traffic sources and ad platforms.

Not every account is a marketplace. A company running its own call center can use buyers to stand for its own queues, regions or teams, and the mechanics are the same.

Everything for one line of business lives in an offer: its tracking numbers, its buyers, its payouts and its reporting. See the "Offer Overview" article.

An Inbound Call, Start to Finish

1. The ad shows a tracking number. A tracking number is a phone number TrackDrive controls, so a call to it can be traced to where the number was shown. A number pool shows website visitors numbers from a pool, either a different number for each visitor or one for each set of tracking details, so each call can be matched to the visit or source that produced it. See the "Ring Pools (Dynamic Number Insertion)" article and the "Numbers, Tracking, and Attribution" article.
2. The consumer dials it. The number belongs to an offer, so TrackDrive knows which line of business the call is for.
3. TrackDrive rules out buyers that can't take the call. Buyers that are closed, paused, at their caps or concurrency limits, or excluded by your filters are skipped.
4. The best remaining buyer gets the call. Depending on each buyer's settings, buyers are ranked by priority (tier and weight), by their current bid, or by earnings per call.
5. The call converts. A buyer conversion happens when the call meets the buyer's conversion rules, such as lasting a minimum number of seconds you set, or when the buyer reports it by postback. The traffic source's payout follows its own conversion rules, which can follow the buyer's conversion. See the "Buyer Conversions" article and the "Offer Payouts" article.
6. Everyone is told. A postback can tell the traffic source that the call converted, and a connected Google Ads account can receive the call as an offline conversion. See the "Why Pay-Per-Call Should Use Postbacks, Not Pixels" article and the "How the Google Ads Integration Works (After Setup)" article.

A Web Lead That Becomes a Call

1. A lead arrives. Leads come in through the API (for example from a web form), a CSV upload, a ping/post integration, or an inbound call. See the "Lead Sources" article.
2. It enters a schedule. A schedule is an ordered sequence of actions, such as dial, wait, send a webhook, post to a CRM, and start over. See the "Schedule Overview" article.
3. The Power Dialer calls it. Before each call it checks the state calling hours, state holidays and call limits you configured, and it skips numbers that are blocked or on the schedule's suppression list. See the "Power Dialer Overview" article.
4. An agent answers. Agents take calls in the browser with the Agent Widget, which shows the lead's details beside the call, or on their own phone number. See the "Agent Widget" article.
5. The agent transfers the caller or records the outcome. Qualified callers can be transferred to a buyer, and the call is given a disposition: a label for its outcome.
6. The outcome drives what happens next. A disposition can trigger follow-up, such as a callback or the next steps in the schedule. See the "Call Dispositions Overview" article.

Glossary

Term	What it means
Pay-per-call	An advertising model where a business pays for each qualified phone call instead of each click.
Offer	The hub for one line of business: its tracking numbers, buyers, payouts and reporting.
Traffic source	An affiliate, publisher or ad channel that sends calls or leads. The supply side.
Buyer	Whoever receives a call and pays for it, such as a call center, law firm or agency. The demand side.
Tracking number	A phone number TrackDrive controls, used to know where a call came from.
Number pool	A set of tracking numbers shown to website visitors, either a different number for each visitor or one for each set of tracking details. Also called a ring pool, or dynamic number insertion (DNI).
Conversion	The point at which a call counts and its revenue and payout are recorded, based on rules such as a minimum call length, or on a postback from the buyer.
Revenue and payout	Revenue is what the buyer pays for a call. Payout is what the traffic source earns for it.
Cap	A limit on a buyer's attempts, connections, conversions or revenue per hour, day, month or in total. Hourly, daily and monthly caps start over each period. A total cap does not start over on its own; it can be reset or raised. See the "Buyer Caps" article.
Tier and weight	Priority, for buyers ranked by priority. Tier 1 is tried before tier 2, and within a tier calls are shared in proportion to weight.
Ping/post	A two-step exchange. The ping sends part of a lead's or caller's details, which can include the phone number, to find available buyers and collect bids. The post then delivers the lead or call to a buyer that bid.
RTB	Real-time bidding. Buyers bid on a call or lead as it happens.
Postback	A server-to-server message telling a partner that a call converted. It does not depend on the consumer's browser.
Contact and lead	A contact is one phone number in your account. A lead is a request to reach that contact for one offer, and it can have many calls. One contact can have many leads. See the "Lead Overview" article.
Schedule	An ordered sequence of follow-up actions for a lead.
Power Dialer	TrackDrive's automatic outbound dialer. It dials leads and connects answered calls to available agents.
Agent	A team member who takes calls, in the browser or on their own phone.
Disposition	The label for a call's outcome, chosen by the agent or set by the system. It can trigger follow-up automation.
Blacklist and suppression list	The blacklist marks a number as blocked across your whole account. A suppression list applies only within the buyers, offers or schedules it is attached to. The Power Dialer and automated texts skip blocked numbers and numbers on their schedule's suppression list; texts an agent sends by hand are not checked against these lists. See the "Blacklist vs Suppression List" article.
TCPA	The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a US federal law that regulates telemarketing calls and texts, including when consent is needed.
10DLC	The US carrier registration system for businesses that send texts from standard 10-digit local numbers.

Compliance

TrackDrive's compliance tools, such as state calling rules, the blacklist and suppression lists, help you run your calling and texting program; they do not, on their own, guarantee compliance. You are solely responsible for configuring these controls and for complying with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), applicable FCC regulations, and any other applicable federal or state telemarketing and consumer privacy laws. This article does not constitute legal advice. See the "Am I Allowed to Dial Outbound on Trackdrive?" article and the "State Compliance Overview" article.