PX State of The Industry 2025

Each year, PX conducts the State of the Industry survey to understand how performance marketing is evolving. The goal is to identify where the market is headed, what’s improving, what’s stagnating, and what needs to change.

This year’s edition surveyed over 600 lead buyers and sellers across 22 industries. The questions focused on lead pricing models, performance metrics, lead quality, data sharing practices, and industry sentiment.

Like every year, we presented these findings at LeadsCon 2025 in the PX keynote session with a panel of industry experts. In the session, industry experts shared their perspectives on the key findings, discussed the biggest challenges facing performance marketing today, and explored how to navigate them. You’ll find highlights from that discussion woven throughout this report.

This year’s findings reveal rising optimism, stronger compliance focus, and emerging shifts in customer acquisition strategies. However, persistent gaps in data sharing, integration, and pricing alignment continue challenging growth, reinforcing the need for stronger collaboration between lead buyers and sellers. The top 10% of successful lead buyers set new performance benchmarks by having greater campaign control, sharing real-time disposition data, adopting dynamic pricing, and expanding their lead source networks.

This report breaks down the full findings, including data-backed insights on what’s working and what’s not.

You can also download the full report at the end of this page.

Let’s begin with the key trends.

This shift is also being driven in part by platform changes. AI-powered search and new ad placements on Google are forcing marketers to rethink their content strategies, visibility, and how branded experiences appear at different places.

Most partnerships don't make the cut.

3 out of 5 lead buyers have a success rate of less than 60% when testing a new partner.

Well, many factors contribute to this outcome: long approval cycles, complex verification and compliance checks, manual accounting, and an overall high-friction onboarding process. In some cases, it takes months before a lead buyer is able to purchase their first lead from a new source.

With a low initial success rate and a time-consuming setup, many teams lose the motivation to test new partners, preventing potential performance gains and new opportunities.

Collaboration in the industry:

Collaboration or interconnectedness in the industry remains the final missing piece of the puzzle. This thread ties together visibility, data sharing, pricing, and performance. Let’s examine why it matters so much and what happens when it’s missing.

Eight out of nine respondents believe that interconnectedness in the industry is key to improving the overall ROI.

One theme that kept coming up in the discussion was the lack of collaboration in the industry. Collaboration is critical for improving ROI on both sides of the lead exchange, and most in the industry agree it’s important. Yet, despite that agreement, the gap remains.

Then what is this disconnect that we keep hearing about the industry not being connected?

Here are seven stats that came out of the survey that prove that there is an urgent need for collaboration in the industry:

1. A disconnect on sentiments between lead sellers and lead buyers

16% of lead sellers believe that buyers are neutral or unhappy with the leads they receive. But the reality is that 34% of lead buyers say they are neutral or dissatisfied with the leads they’re buying. That means lead buyers are more than twice as likely to be unhappy as sellers realize, revealing a clear perception gap that affects communication, trust, and performance on both sides.

2. Data is not being shared as frequently as one might think

Only 7% of lead buyers share disposition data daily, and only 9% of lead sellers, which makes sense, receive disposition data daily. We will see how frequently sharing disposition data improves the KPI success rate later in this report.

3. Marketers are juggling multiple platforms to track the ROI

Marketers use an average of four different systems to track ROI, often jumping between dashboards and spreadsheets to understand campaign performance. Despite the push for automation, much of the customer acquisition process is still manual. Disposition data, customer reports, bidding rules, accounting, and billing are handled manually across disconnected tools.

With so much relying on manual effort, decision-making is delayed at every step, resulting in missed ROI and limited ability to scale.

4. The need for integration is clearer than ever

55% of lead sellers say that they are not or partially integrated with their lead buyers. It again builds up to the need for a more interconnected industry.

5. Today's top operational challenge for lead buyers is the lack of transparency and trust with lead partners.

#2 - Prioritizing the right channels or lead sources

#3 - Scattered marketing tech stack

This challenge ties directly back to the earlier section on compliance and regulations, where 1 in 5 people in the industry don’t believe compliance is critical to success. From a lead buyer’s perspective, that raises a serious concern: How do you trust a partner if you’re not sure they share your standards or are simply doing what’s needed to get leads sold and paid for?

Data sharing plays a critical role in building that trust. When both sides share performance data, it becomes clear how each party uses that information to improve. For example, when disposition data is shared back with the lead seller, they gain visibility into what’s converting and can adjust lead quality accordingly.

In the end, trust is built by defining success, sharing the data, and seeing how your partners act on it. That’s the foundation for transparency and long-term collaboration.

6. Dropped leads and calls remain a big problem

20-30% of leads and calls are getting dropped. This is the same as last year. This recurring issue points back to the broader disconnect in the ecosystem, either in targeting the right consumers or in the lead buyer’s availability when the lead is generated.

It’s a clear signal that valuable opportunities will continue to slip through the cracks without tighter coordination and better timing between buyers and sellers.

7. Who is dictating the price of the leads today

There’s a clear disconnect between lead buyers and sellers regarding who controls pricing. 77% of lead buyers believe they either set or negotiate the price, while 78% of lead sellers say the same. Yet around 20% of each side feels that the other party is actually in control.

The reality is more nuanced. In high-performing lead tiers with low volume and high quality, lead sellers often have the upper hand, setting prices based on scarcity. In contrast, at scale, buyers tend to hold more influence. Even then, many sellers still present pricing as fixed, rather than part of a dynamic negotiation. This gap in perception shows how far the industry still has to go in aligning on value and pricing expectations.

What top 10% successful lead buyers are doing differently:

Let’s look closer at the top 10% of lead buyers, consistently saying they’re hitting their KPIs. What sets them apart? What are they doing differently compared to those who aren’t meeting their performance goals?

The data clearly shows the specific behaviors, systems, and strategies that differentiate high-performing lead buyers from the rest.

1. Getting in the driver's seat

50% higher KPI success rates are achieved by lead buyers who have the right control over their campaigns. Lead buyers who have full control over their campaigns and can adjust filters, pricing, and routing in real time see 50% higher KPI success rates than those who don’t. Having control isn’t just about visibility. It’s about being able to act on that visibility. The ability to fine-tune acquisition settings as conditions change gives top-performing buyers a measurable edge.

2. Sharing frequent feedback is a game-changer

Top-performing lead buyers don’t just collect disposition data; they share it frequently with their partners. The results show that lead buyers who share disposition data daily are 68% more likely to hit their KPIs. Those who share it in real time are 90% more likely to hit their KPIs.

3. More sources, better results

Among top-performing lead buyers, one of the strongest differentiators is the number of lead sources they manage. Lead buyers working with 1–10 sources hit their KPIs 39% of the time. However, for those managing 40+ sources, that number jumps to 83%.

And why does this matter?

Because relying on just a few lead sources limits the flexibility. If one lead partner slows down, quality dips, or pricing spikes, lead buyers are left exposed. With a broader mix, lead buyers gain control. They can absorb fluctuations, test different sub-sources and filters, and double down on what’s working, all without disrupting their pipeline.

This year, the average number of lead sources managed by buyers increased from 21 to 33. That shift reflects a growing understanding: breadth equals resilience.

More sources don’t just help you scale, they help you scale predictably. That’s what sets the top 10% apart.

4. Not all leads are created equal, and their pricing shouldn't be

Another clear trait of top-performing lead buyers is their adoption of dynamic pricing models. Today, 80% of lead buyers are still purchasing leads at a fixed price. However, the difference is striking when comparing their performance: only 41% of buyers using fixed pricing hit their KPIs, while 81% of those using dynamic pricing do. In other words, dynamic pricing doubles your chances of hitting your goals.

The reason is simple. Not all leads are created equal, and their pricing shouldn't be either. Dynamic pricing allows lead buyers to pay based on the value of each lead, adjusting the price depending on how likely that lead is to meet their KPI goals.

To make this work, buyers need systems that can evaluate multiple factors, such as channel, publisher quality, zip code, and historical lead performance, and then assign a value to each lead accordingly. These systems continuously adjust bids in real time, learning from disposition data and optimizing toward outcomes.

For the top 10%, the pricing model that reflects performance, improves efficiency, and increases KPI success rates over time.

Future outlook: The roadblocks and opportunities ahead

Now let's see what the future holds and the major roadblocks and opportunities ahead.

The biggest operational challenge for lead buyers:

1. Lack of transparency and trust with partners
2. Prioritizing the right channels or lead sources
3. Scattered marketing tech stack
4. Keeping agents active/optimizing call center metrics
5. Retaining customers

Biggest challenge for 2024: Keeping agents active/optimizing call center metrics