Glossary · Term
The ordered sequence in which a call or lead is offered to buyers, priced against caps, filters, and priority.
Definition
A buyer waterfall is the runtime execution of your monetization strategy. On the call side it is target order, concurrency, and hours. On the form-fill side it is the ping tree. Both share the same shape: a prioritized list of buyers that the platform steps through until one accepts inventory at an agreed price.
Why it matters
Waterfall order determines margin. Two networks with identical publisher volume and identical buyers can post radically different payouts based on waterfall configuration alone. This is the single highest-leverage configuration in the platform and the one most often left on defaults.
How it fails in practice
The failure is invisible: no error, no alert, just a slow drift in blended payout as buyer behavior changes and the waterfall stays static. Detecting it requires reconciling posted revenue against alternative orderings, which requires cross-platform reporting — which most operations never build.
Related terms
A 30-minute working session to map how this term shows up in your platforms, workflows, and reporting — and where it is currently exposed.