Lead

A lead is a prospect made concrete: a completed form, a newsletter sign-up, a booked test drive, a created account or a request for a quote. Not a penny has been spent yet – the value lies in the opportunity. The advertiser pays for the chance to turn the prospect into a customer through follow-up sales, emails or advice. In B2B, leads are often graded by maturity – from a cold sign-up to a sales-ready prospect – but in affiliate settlement only the definition the program itself has set counts.

In affiliate marketing, leads are paid in CPL programs at a fixed amount per approved lead. The model dominates in industries with a long sales process and high value per customer: insurance, loans, energy contracts, B2B software and car sales. A car dealer might pay DKK 100 for every test drive booked through an affiliate link – if the person later buys the car, the lead was still the action that triggered the commission, not the sale.

Quality decides whether the model holds. Advertisers validate leads before approving them: a valid phone number, no duplicates, genuine interest. The program terms define exactly what counts – a newsletter sign-up and a completed loan application are both leads, but very different in value. Incentivised traffic, where people fill in forms to get a reward, produces leads that look fine in the statistics and never become customers.