The difference
- Exclusive: sold once, to a single buyer. Higher price, higher buyer expectations.
- Shared: sold to multiple buyers (a sell-count), each paying less.
How routing differs
Shared distribution needs sell-count tracking and ordering (who gets it first, second, third); exclusive needs strict single-sale enforcement. Pricing tiers and caps hang off this distinction.
On the platform I built, that enforcement is Boberdoo's job, and my routing work is driving the ping/post cycle around it. The lead pings Boberdoo, Boberdoo applies each buyer's filters, caps, and sell-count rules and returns the set of qualifying bids, and the platform reads every winning bid id and posts the full lead to all of them at once. A lead that comes back with one bid is effectively exclusive; one that comes back with several is shared, up to the sell-count each buyer is configured for.
Each buyer also has its own delivery script, and most exist in both an exclusive and a shared variant, that maps the lead onto that buyer's API and parses the accept, reject, or partial-sell response. So the sell-count, ordering, and exclusivity live in the Boberdoo configuration, while the per-buyer delivery and the ping/post orchestration are what I build and maintain.
FAQ
- Which is more profitable, exclusive or shared?
- It depends on demand: exclusive earns more per lead, shared earns more total when enough buyers want the vertical.
- Can one system do both?
- Yes. A good distribution system routes a lead as exclusive or shared based on buyer bids and rules.