Cost per lead (also known as CPL, pay per lead, PPL) is a pricing model in digital advertising where advertisers pay for every generated lead. A lead is a person who expressed their interest in the brand by leaving their contact information or signing up for a newsletter.
The cost per lead model is a middle ground between advertisers and publishers.
In the cost per impression model, advertisers are not satisfied with results: publishers do not do much and there are no feasible results. In the cost per sale models, publishers are not happy: they have to do too much and sometimes a sale is not made because of the problems on the advertiser’s side.
Cost per lead somehow divides responsibility equally between both sides. Advertisers get actual results in the form of interested customers and publishers are not the ones fully responsible for the sale.
In order to make the pricing model more productive, marketers should optimize their lead generation: make sign-up forms as short as possible and offer discounts, coupons, or useful newsletters/statistics/case studies, etc.
