Glossary · Term
An ordered structure of buyers that a lead is offered to in sequence until one accepts or the tree is exhausted.
Definition
A ping tree is the executable form of a distribution strategy: buyers arranged by priority, price, cap, vertical, and filter criteria. Each lead traverses the tree from top to bottom, stopping when a buyer accepts. Tree order, timeouts, and fallback logic are what turn a list of buyers into revenue.
Why it matters
The order of the tree is the single largest determinant of blended payout per lead. A tree that puts a high-payout buyer behind a low-cap high-frequency buyer will burn inventory on the cheaper contract and starve the higher-margin one, without any error appearing anywhere.
How it fails in practice
Trees drift. A buyer's cap moves, a new buyer is added at the bottom instead of tested at position two, or a filter that used to disqualify 5% of traffic silently starts disqualifying 40% after a source change. The tree still runs; the payout table quietly compresses.
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