Glossary · Term
In call platforms, a buyer is the commercial counterparty; a target is the destination endpoint (number, campaign, or queue) that fulfills a buyer contract.
Definition
The distinction is operational: buyers negotiate payouts, sign contracts, and receive invoices. Targets are the routing rules that send calls to a buyer's actual endpoints. A single buyer can have many targets — one per vertical, region, or campaign — and reporting has to roll targets up to buyers correctly for reconciliation to be trustworthy.
Why it matters
Confusing targets with buyers breaks reconciliation. Reports show revenue per target but payouts are contracted per buyer; unless the rollup is correct, the two never match and the discrepancy is impossible to explain to either the buyer or the publisher.
How it fails in practice
A new target is added under a buyer and forgotten in the rollup mapping. Revenue against that target is orphaned in reports, publishers do not get credited, and month-end reconciliation surfaces the issue only when totals fail to reconcile.
Related terms
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