Lead marketplace, lead-gen agency or pay per lead: which model suits a finance broker?
A marketplace sells you a record, an agency sells you its time, and a pay-per-lead provider sells you an enquiry that cleared your criteria. Decide who should carry the risk of a campaign failing and the choice mostly makes itself.
A marketplace sells you a record someone else generated, usually to other brokers too, and you do the sorting. An agency sells you its time in your own ad accounts, including the months that do not convert. A pay-per-lead provider sells you only the enquiries that clear your criteria, so the failed campaigns sit inside its price, not on your invoice.
Pay per lead is usually the default for a commercial finance broker who needs conversations this quarter; the cases for the other two are below.
Lead marketplace
A platform that pools enquiries from many sources, often third-party publishers and comparison sites, and sells them per record, frequently to more than one buyer. You usually cannot see the ad or the form the person was answering.
Lead-gen agency
A service business that builds and runs search and social campaigns in your name, inside your ad accounts, for a monthly fee plus media spend. You own the accounts, the audiences and the data.
Pay per lead, direct
A provider that runs its own campaigns and its own qualification form, verifies the contact, and sells each enquiry that clears the criteria, priced per enquiry. The better versions sell each one once; some resell. You own the leads and the clients, not the campaign.
Seven questions. Where the answer is "depends on the provider", that is the question to ask before you pay.
- What you are paying for. Marketplace: a record, paid whether or not the number answers. Agency: hours and media spend, paid whether or not the month converts. Pay per lead: an enquiry that cleared the stated criteria, with the failed campaigns already priced in.
- Who carries the performance risk. Marketplace: you, one record at a time. Agency: you, one month at a time. Pay per lead: the provider, which is why it can only afford to sell enquiries it has qualified.
- Exclusivity. Agency: inherent, because the enquiry came to your page and nobody else's. Marketplace: usually shared, sometimes with a higher-priced tier that goes to one buyer. Pay per lead: provider-dependent; sold once is a question to ask, not an assumption. Why it matters for considered deals is in exclusive vs shared leads.
- Verification. Marketplace: varies by source and you cannot audit it. Agency: only if SMS verification is built into your form, which is a separate piece of work the agency has to build and you have to pay for. Pay per lead: the provider's job; ask whether the mobile is confirmed before the enquiry is delivered.
- Ramp time. Marketplace: none, it is self-serve. Agency: months, because the campaigns have to be built and then learn inside your account. Pay per lead: days, because the campaigns already exist and only your criteria, territory and delivery are new.
- Scaling. Marketplace: instant, and widening the filters is exactly how quality falls. Agency: more spend plus more of your management time. Pay per lead: cadence up or down, capped by the provider's volume in your niche and states.
- Accountability for the advertising. Agency: the ads run in your name, so every claim in them is yours to defend. Marketplace: the ad was written by a publisher you cannot audit. Pay per lead: the provider wrote and ran it, and ASIC's RG 234, reissued 9 June 2026, covers intermediaries including lead generators (ASIC, June 2026). Ask any provider how its advertising is reviewed.
Price is deliberately absent. A per-record price, a per-enquiry price and a retainer are not comparable; cost per funded deal is, and the working is in our finance leads cost guide.
A marketplace suits a volume operation. A team with a dialler, a script and the discipline to ring within seconds of a record landing can make shared records work on small consumer asset and small business tickets, because speed is the whole edge. You are paying for the right to race, not for a conversation, and a marketplace rarely works as the primary source for considered commercial deals because the borrower notices the race.
An agency suits a brokerage that wants to own the machine. The ad accounts, audiences and landing-page data stay yours when the engagement ends, which matters if you plan to bring marketing in-house or write a niche too narrow for anyone to generate at scale; the price is carrying the learning period and the quiet months yourself. More in pay per lead vs retainer and buying leads vs your own ads.
Pay per lead suits a broker who needs conversations this quarter and wants the campaign risk on someone else. You write business loans, asset finance or commercial property, can call inside the hour, and would rather pay for a verified enquiry than a month of effort. You give up the campaign assets, and volume is whatever the provider produces in your niche.
Where a marketplace goes wrong
Aged records resurfacing under a fresh timestamp. Filters that say business loan on a person who wanted a personal loan. A bidding dynamic where the price climbs exactly when the record looks good. No way to audit the source, so every quality problem becomes a dispute rather than a fix.
Where an agency goes wrong
A quiet month still invoices. The learning period runs in your account on your money. Creative that passes platform finance rules but pulls the wrong borrower. An incentive to keep the retainer alive rather than tell you the channel is tapped.
Where pay per lead goes wrong
Pay per lead on the invoice does not mean sold once. Criteria you never wrote down become enquiries you did not want. Volume is capped by the provider's campaigns in your niche and state. You build nothing you own, so leaving takes your pipeline with it.
We are the third model and only the third model. We run our own Google and Meta campaigns in Australia, qualify each enquiry against your stated criteria with automated scoring and a human review, verify the mobile by SMS before the lead ships, and sell it once, to one broker, dedup-enforced across all our clients. Pay per lead, no lock-in contracts, no setup fees, no monthly retainers; campaigns are typically live within 7 days, and our published contact rate is 72.5%. We do not run ad management for brokers, so if you want the agency model we are not it; otherwise start with commercial finance leads, or business loan leads if that is what you write.