Priority (Waterfall)
Priority (Waterfall) lead distribution in Lead Distro AI: offer every lead to your best buyer first and let caps and filters push the rest down the ladder. Full day walkthroughs, tier patterns, and edge cases.
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What is Priority distribution?
Priority, also called Waterfall, offers every lead to your first-ranked buyer before anyone else. If that buyer cannot take it, the lead falls to rank 2, then rank 3, and so on down the ladder until somebody accepts.
It is the method to pick when revenue matters more than an even split. Your best buyer pays the most and converts the best, so they should see everything they can absorb. The buyers below them exist to catch what is left.
Priority and Waterfall are two names for the same thing. Priority describes how you set it up (you rank buyers), Waterfall describes what happens at runtime (leads fall down the ranks). Lead Distro AI uses Priority in the interface.
When to use Priority
- One buyer pays much more. Sending a lead anywhere else first is money left on the table.
- Your best buyer has limited capacity. They take 50 a day and you generate 200, so 150 need somewhere to go.
- Your best buyer is picky. They only want certain states or case types, and everything else should cascade to a broader buyer.
- You are testing someone new on overflow only, so they get the leads your primary buyer could not take without putting the main relationship at risk.
- You resell aged or returned leads down a ladder of progressively cheaper buyers.
How to configure it
- Open your campaign, go to Settings > Routing, and set Distribution Method to Priority.
- On the Destinations tab, drag buyers into the order you want, or use the up and down arrows. The top row is offered first.
- Set caps on every buyer except the last one. Caps are what make the waterfall flow. Without them the top buyer takes everything.
- Optionally add filters to higher-ranked buyers so leads they do not want cascade automatically.
- Leave the bottom buyer uncapped so it can absorb whatever reaches it.
If your top buyer has no cap and no filters, nobody below them will ever receive a lead. That is the most common Priority misconfiguration, and it looks exactly like a broken campaign from the second buyer's point of view.
Example: a three-rank ladder
| Rank | Buyer | Pays | Daily cap | Filter | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Premium law firm | $150 | 30/day | CA, TX, FL only | Takes everything it can, at the best price |
| P2 | Mid-tier firm | $80 | 50/day | Nationwide | Absorbs overflow and the states P1 will not take |
| P3 | Bulk buyer | $40 | no cap | Nationwide | Catch-all so nothing is wasted |
A full day on that ladder
120 leads arrive across the day, roughly 70 percent from CA, TX, and FL.
| Point in the day | What is happening | Where leads go |
|---|---|---|
| Leads 1 to 30 in-state | Premium is under its cap and the state matches | Premium, at $150 |
| Any out-of-state lead | Premium's filter rejects it before delivery | Straight to Mid-tier, at $80 |
| After Premium's 30th lead | Premium is at its cap and leaves the pool | Mid-tier, at $80 |
| After Mid-tier's 50th lead | Both P1 and P2 are capped | Bulk, at $40 |
| Rest of the day | Only Bulk has room | Bulk, at $40 |
| 08:00 UTC | Daily counters reset | Premium is first in line again |
Revenue for the day is 30 x $150 plus 50 x $80 plus 40 x $40, which is $10,100. Run the same 120 leads through Round Robin and you would earn roughly $9,000, because a third of them would go to the $40 buyer while the $150 buyer still had room.
Caps and filters are the two taps
A waterfall only flows because something stops the buyer above. There are exactly two things that do that, and they behave differently.
| Caps | Filters | |
|---|---|---|
| Triggers overflow | Once per day, when the number is reached | Per lead, whenever the lead does not match |
| Affects | Every lead after the cap | Only the leads that do not match |
| Resets | Daily at 08:00 UTC, weekly Monday, monthly on the 1st | Nothing to reset |
| Use it for | Capacity: how much a buyer can handle | Fit: which leads a buyer wants at all |
Edge cases, in detail
| Scenario | What Lead Distro AI does |
|---|---|
| Rank 1 hits its daily cap | Every later lead starts at rank 2 for the rest of the day. Rank 1 is first again after the 08:00 UTC reset. |
| Rank 1 rejects one lead at delivery | That lead falls to rank 2 immediately. Rank 1 keeps its position for the next lead. |
| Rank 1 is slow to respond | Distribution has an overall time budget of about 22 seconds. If slow buyers eat it, the run stops and the lead is set to Error with the reason Distribution Timeout, rather than being left stuck. |
| Two buyers share the same rank | They are treated as one level and the order between them is stable but arbitrary. Rank them explicitly if the order matters, or switch to Weighted so the split inside the level is deliberate. |
| Every buyer is capped or filtered | The lead lands on Error with a reason naming which. Nothing is billed. |
| You add a buyer mid-day | Insert it at the rank you want. Buyers below shift down, and the change applies from the next lead. |
| You want to sell one lead twice | Set Sells per lead on the source. Distribution walks the same ladder and stops after that many acceptances, each buyer paying its own price. |
Patterns worth copying
| Pattern | How to build it | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Premium then bulk | Two ranks: a high payer with a cap, then an uncapped bulk buyer | The simplest way to stop wasting overflow |
| Geo ladder | Rank 1 filtered to your best states, rank 2 nationwide | Your strongest buyer never sees a lead they would decline |
| New buyer on trial | Put the new buyer last with no cap for two weeks | They only get leads nobody else took, so a bad buyer costs you nothing |
| Split the overflow | Switch to Weighted, keep the top buyer alone on P1, and put the overflow buyers together on P2 with shares | Priority first look, then a fair split of what falls through |
Set a notification when your top buyer hits its cap. That alert is the moment your overflow starts, which is the earliest signal you have that demand is running past your best buyer's capacity, and usually the moment to go find another one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Priority and Waterfall?
Nothing. They are two names for the same method. Priority is the configuration view (you rank buyers) and Waterfall is the runtime view (leads fall from rank to rank). Lead Distro AI uses Priority in the interface, and you will see Waterfall used for the same idea across the industry.
If rank 1 has no cap, will rank 2 ever receive a lead?
Only when a filter rejects the lead, or when the delivery itself fails. If rank 1 is uncapped and unfiltered, it takes everything. If your top buyer genuinely has unlimited capacity but you still want to feed the others, use Weighted with a tilted share like 80/20 instead.
How many ranks can I have?
As many as you have buyers. Three is the common shape (premium, mid, bulk). Four and five are normal once you add a test buyer or an aged-lead reseller at the bottom. The only rule worth keeping is that the last rank should be uncapped, so there is always somewhere for a lead to land.
How do filters interact with the ranks?
Filters decide eligibility before the ladder is walked, so a buyer that does not match this lead is simply not on the ladder for it. Ranking is unchanged: a Texas-only rank 1 is skipped for a California lead, which starts at rank 2, and rank 1 is back at the top for the next Texas lead.
When exactly do caps reset?
Daily caps reset at 08:00 UTC, which is midnight Pacific. Weekly caps reset Monday and monthly caps on the 1st, on the same clock. Total caps are lifetime and never reset. A buyer can be under its daily cap and still blocked by its weekly or monthly one.
Can I promote a lower-ranked buyer temporarily?
Yes. Reorder them on the Destinations tab and the change takes effect on the next lead. Move them back when the test is over. There is no scheduled reordering, so if you need this on a rhythm, set a reminder or use per-buyer availability hours to open and close their window instead.
Is Priority the same as ping-post?
No, and they are not alternatives. Priority is the order you try buyers in. Ping-Post is a protocol where a buyer is asked about the lead before the full data is sent. You can run both: a Priority campaign can have ping-enabled buyers, in which case each buyer is pinged in rank order and the first one to accept gets the post.
Why is my lead marked Error when rank 3 has room?
Read the timeline on that lead. The usual answer is that rank 3 was not actually eligible: a filter it does not advertise, an empty wallet, a suppression list hit, or a missing delivery URL. Every skipped buyer is listed there with the exact reason, which is faster than guessing from the ladder.
Related Articles
Routing Methods
Every way Lead Distro AI decides which buyer gets a lead: Round Robin, Weighted, Weighted (Fair Share), Priority (Waterfall), and Best Price. Compare all five side by side and pick the right one for your campaign.
Round Robin
Round Robin lead distribution in Lead Distro AI: rotate leads equally across every eligible buyer, with worked examples, cap and pause behavior, and the rotation rules that keep the split even.
Weighted
Weighted lead distribution in Lead Distro AI: give each buyer a percentage share of a priority tier (60/40, 50/30/20) with worked examples, tier fallthrough, and what to do when shares do not add up to 100.
Weighted (Fair Share)
Fair Share lead distribution in Lead Distro AI: weight becomes a daily target and every lead goes to whoever is furthest behind. Worked day-by-day examples, fill-ratio math, and how targets differ from caps.
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