The exchange

How the exchange works

Dependable Call Exchange is a business-to-business pay-per-call exchange. We connect publishers — the marketing partners who generate inbound phone calls — with buyers, the businesses that want to receive those calls. A real-time auction decides which buyer receives each call, and the buyer pays per qualified call. Buyers stay in control of their call quality — they see live, per-source performance and turn each traffic source on or off themselves. We do not contact consumers and we do not sell consumer information; we route phone calls between vetted businesses.

How the Dependable Call Exchange routes a call A routing schematic: publishers (call sources, left) send inbound calls into the Dependable Call Exchange (centre), where a real-time auction matches each call to a buyer (right). The five numbered stations are: 1 publishers send calls; 2 buyers choose which sources they accept; 3 the auction matches the call to a buyer; 4 the buyer receives the connected call; 5 the call is billed per call. Brass marks the buyer/destination side, verdigris the publisher/source side. PUBLISHERS EXCHANGE BUYERS buyers enable / disable sources 1 2 3 4 5 send calls pick sources auction receive billed
Publishers route inbound calls into the exchange; a real-time auction matches each call to a buyer. The five numbered stations correspond to the five steps below.

Step by step

The five steps, in order

1 · Publishers

Publishers send calls

Publishers are advertising and media partners who run their own compliant campaigns and produce inbound calls in a given category (for example legal services, home services, or insurance). Each publisher is onboarded and agrees to our terms before any call traffic is accepted. When a call comes in, it arrives at the exchange tagged with the category and basic routing attributes — never a consumer profile to be resold.

2 · Publishers

Buyers choose their sources

Buyers don't take whatever the exchange sends. Each buyer sees real, live performance for every publisher source feeding their verticals — conversion, quality, and volume — and toggles each source on or off themselves. You vet a source before you turn it on, and switch it off the moment its numbers slip. Only the sources you've enabled are eligible to route you a call.

3 · Exchange

The auction matches the call to a buyer

The moment a call reaches the exchange, our routing engine runs a real-time auction among the buyers who are active for that category and set of attributes — and, on each buyer's side, only among the sources that buyer has enabled. Buyers configure the call types they accept, the sources they allow, their hours, their capacity, and the price they are willing to pay. The auction selects the buyer whose bid and routing rules best fit the live call, and the call is connected — typically in well under a second.

4 · Buyers

Buyers receive the call

Buyers are businesses that want qualified inbound phone calls instead of static advertisements. They receive the connected call on their own lines, handle it with their own staff, and keep full control of which calls they accept. Routing is category-based and business-to-business; the exchange never represents itself to the caller or markets to consumers on a buyer's behalf.

5 · Buyers

Billing is per call

Pricing is set by the auction, so buyers pay only for the calls they actually receive, at the rate they bid. We reconcile call detail records between publishers and buyers, and settle on that record. There are no consumer charges and no per-impression media buys — the unit of value is a connected, qualified phone call between two businesses.

Messaging

Where SMS fits

Any text messages we send are operational and account-related — for example confirming a partner's account or a routing change — to publishers and buyers we already work with. They are not marketing blasts. You opt in on our contact form, and our SMS Terms and Privacy Policy describe exactly what we send and how to stop it.